This vivid, detailed history of World War I presents the general reader with an accurate and readable account of the campaigns and battles, along with brilliant portraits of the leaders and generals of all countries involved. Scrupulously fair, praising and blaming friend and enemy as circumstances demand, this has become established as the classic account of the first world-wide war.
PART ONE: INTO THE ABYSS 1871-1914 1. The Long Descent 2. From Peace to War PART TWO: THE ABYSS 1914-1918 3. The Opening Campaigns 1914 4. The Wider War 1914-1915 5. The Stalemate in Europe 1915 6. The Wider War 1915-1916 7. Tipping Points in Europe 1916-1917 8. War-Weariness and the Question of Peace in Europe 1917 9. War, Politics, and Diplomacy in the Middle East and Russia 1917-1918 10. The Last Furious Year of the Great War 1917-1918 PART THREE: SLOWLY OUT OF THE ABYSS 1918-1926 11. The Violent Aftermath of the Great War in Europe 1918-1926 12. The Problematic Legacy of the Great War in the Wider World 1918-1926 13. Epilogue: Bereavement, Economic Collapse, and the Climate for War.
Michael Neiberg offers a concise history based on the latest research and insights into the soldiers, commanders, battles, and legacies of the Great War.
A brief but thorough collection, Susan Grayzel’s new revision of The First World War document reader allows students to experience this historical turning point through various sources from the period and the scholarship tied to them.
A lively, engaging history of The Great War written for a new generation of readers In recent years, scholarship on World War I has turned from a fairly narrow focus on military tactics, weaponry, and diplomacy to incorporate considerations of empire, globalism, and social and cultural history. This concise history of the first modern, global war helps to further broaden the focus typically provided in World War I surveys by challenging popular myths and stereotypes to provide a new, engaging account of The Great War. The conventional World War I narrative that has evolved over the past century is that of an inevitable but useless war, where men were needlessly slaughtered due to poor decisions by hidebound officers. This characterization developed out of a narrow focus on the Western Front promulgated mainly by British historians. In this book, Professor Proctor provides a broader, more multifaceted historical narrative including perspectives from other fronts and spheres of interest and a wider range of participants. She also draws on recent scholarship to consider the gendered aspect of war and the ways in which social class, religion, and cultural factors shaped experiences and memories of the war. Structured chronologically to help convey a sense of how the conflict evolved Each chapter considers a key interpretive question, encouraging readers to examine the extent to which the war was total, modern, and global Challenges outdated stereotypes created through a focus on the Western Front Considers the war in light of recent scholarship on empire, global history, gender, and culture Explores ways in which the war and the terms of peace shaped the course of the 20th century World War I: A Short History is sure to become required reading in undergraduate survey courses on WWI, as well as courses in military history, the 20th century world, or the era of the World Wars.
After the unprecedented destruction of the Great War, the world longed for a lasting peace. The victors, however, valued vengeance even more than stability and demanded a massive indemnity from Germany in order to keep it from rearming. The results, as eminent historian Norman Stone describes in this authoritative history, were disastrous. In World War Two, Stone provides a remarkably concise account of the deadliest war of human history, showing how the conflict roared to life from the ashes of World War One. Adolf Hitler rode a tide of popular desperation and resentment to power in Germany, promptly making good on his promise to return the nation to its former economic and military strength. He bullied Europe into giving him his way, and in so doing backed the victors of the Great War into a corner. Following the invasion of Poland in 1939, Britain and France declared war on Germany -- a decision that, Stone argues, was utterly irrational. Yet Hitler had driven the world mad, and the rekindling of European hostilities soon grew to a conflagration that spread across the globe, fanned by political and racial ideologies more poisonous -- and weaponry more destructive -- than the world had ever seen. With commanding expertise, Stone leads readers through the escalation, climax, and mournful denouement of this sprawling conflict. World War Two is an invaluable contribution to our understanding of the twentieth century and its defining struggle.
From the Treaty of Versailles to the 2018 centenary and beyond, the history of the First World War has been continually written and rewritten, studied and contested, producing a rich historiography shaped by the social and cultural circumstances of its creation. Writing the Great War provides a groundbreaking survey of this vast body of work, assembling contributions on a variety of national and regional historiographies from some of the most prominent scholars in the field. By analyzing perceptions of the war in contexts ranging from Nazi Germany to India’s struggle for independence, this is an illuminating collective study of the complex interplay of memory and history.
