Benjamin Disraeli, the 19th-century British prime minister, called biography life without theory. Its arc, he suggested, provides structure enough without some grand explanatory system—and reveals a great deal, along the way, about the times in which a life is lived. Geoffrey Parker's “Emperor: A New Life of Charles V” provides a masterly example of biography as just such a window on the past—on early modern Europe, in all its dynastic rivalry and imperial unrest.
Charles, Mr. Parker notes, “wielded greater power for longer than any other European ruler before or since.” Heir to a collection of realms—including Spain and its American colonies, along with the Netherlands—he eventually succeeded his grandfather as Holy Roman Emperor in central Europe. Recognizing the difficulty of ruling such extensive domains from a distance, he divided them, upon his death, between his son and brother to form the Spanish and Austrian branches of the Habsburg line.
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