First World War Books

Book SynopsisA vivid and original account of warfare in the Middle Ages and the cruelty and atrocity that accompanied it.Sean McGlynn investigates the reality of medieval warfare. For all the talk of chivalry, medieval warfare routinely involved acts which we would consider war crimes. Lands laid waste, civilians slaughtered, prisoners massacred: this was standard fare justified by tradition and practical military necessity. It was unbelievably barbaric, but seldom uncontrolled. Such acts of atrocity were calculated, hideous cruelties inflicted in order to achieve a specific end. Sean McGlynn examines the battles of Acre and Agincourt, sieges like Béziers, Lincoln, Jerusalem and Limoges as well as the infamous chevauchées of the Hundred Years War that devastated great swathes of France. He reveals how these grisly affairs form the origin of accepted ''rules of war'', codes of conduct that are today being enforced in the International Court of Justice in the Hague.Trade ReviewGory, but compelling reading * NORTHERN ECHO *a much needed corrective to the view that chivalry definied medieval fighting * CONTEMPORARY REVIEW *

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Book SynopsisDoris Lessing's first book after winning the Nobel Prize for Literature revisits her childhood in Southern Africa and the lives, both fictional and factual, that her parents led.I think my father'''s rage at the trenches took me over, when I was very young, and has never left me. Do children feel their parents'' emotions? Yes, we do, and it is a legacy I could have done without. What is the use of it? It is as if that old war is in my own memory, my own consciousness.'In this extraordinary book, Doris Lessing explores the lives of her parents, both of them irrevocably damaged by the Great War. Her father wanted the simple life of an English farmer, but shrapnel almost killed him in the trenches, and thereafter he had to wear a wooden leg. Her mother Emily''s great love was a doctor who drowned in the Channel, and she spent the war nursing the wounded in the Royal Free Hospital.In the first half of this book, Lessing imagines the lives her parents might have made for themselves had therTrade Review'Writers approaching 90 aren't supposed to write with vigour or experiment with form. But Lessing has never done the expected thing and "Alfred and Emily" is one more exception in an exceptional career.' Blake Morrison, Guardian ‘This tale has a quality at once dreamy and wooden, like beautifully carved wooden dolls. Vividly and urgently written, [it] makes us think about the moral and emotional power of different ways of telling a story.' Financial Times 'Vivid, turbulent, raw with emotion.' Sunday Telegraph 'Quietly extraordinary…this perfectly crafted book is, as Lessing knows, the latest instalment of a remarkable payback.' Observer 'Powerful…it is fascinating to see [Lessing] focus so sharply in her new book on what must be for us all, the most intimate of personal narratives: our parents' lives, what they were, or might have been.' The Times ‘Lessing excels in the portrait of unsatisfactory lives, and together the parts form a poignant experiment.’ Daily Telegraph 'It has the freshness, clarity and emotional acuity that made her first novel "The Grass is Singing" so outstanding. A tribute to a remarkable childhood, and a poignant memoir of the mother whose greatest legacy to her daughter was an invaluable gift for storytelling.’ Literary Review

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Book SynopsisThoroughly researched and beautifully written history.?New York Times Book Review?Absorbing . . . a David-and-Goliath tale of the industrial age.??Wall Street JournalA propulsive human drama that chronicles the mass exodus of Jews from Eastern Europe to America in the early years of the twentieth century, and the men who made it possible.Over thirty years, from 1890 to 1921, 2.5 million Jews, fleeing discrimination and violence in their homelands of Eastern Europe, arrived in the United States. Many sailed on steamships from Hamburg.This mass exodus was facilitated by three businessmen whose involvement in the Jewish-American narrative has been largely forgotten: Jacob Schiff, the managing partner of the investment bank Kuhn, Loeb & Company, who used his immense wealth to help Jews to leave Europe; Albert Ballin, managing director of the Hamburg-American Line, who created a transportation network of trains and steamships to carry them across continents and an ocean; and J. P. Morgan, mastermind of the International Mercantile Marine (I.M.M.) trust, who tried to monopolize the lucrative steamship business. Though their goals were often contradictory, together they made possible a migration that spared millions from persecution. Descendants of these immigrants included Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Estée Lauder, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Fanny Brice, Lauren Bacall, the Marx Brothers, David Sarnoff, Al Jolson, Sam Goldwyn, Ben Shahn, Hank Greenberg, Moses Annenberg, and many more?including Ujifusa?s great grandparents. That is their legacy.Moving from the shtetls of Russia and the ports of Hamburg to the mansions of New York?s Upper East Side and the picket lines outside of the notorious Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, The Last Ships from Hamburg is a history that unfolds on both an intimate and epic scale. Meticulously researched, masterfully told, Ujifusa?s story offers original insight into the American experience, connecting banking, shipping, politics, immigration, nativism, and war?and delivers crucial insight into the burgeoning refugee crisis of our own time.

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Book Synopsis“A haunting meditation on the bonds between mothers and daughters. Zeldis offers a fascinating look into historic New York City and New Orleans, and her skill as a storyteller is matched by her compassion for her characters. What a beautiful read.”—Fiona Davis, New York Times bestselling author of The Magnolia Palace“By turns heartbreaking and heartwarming, Kitty Zeldis’s The Dressmakers of Prospect Heights, set against the backdrop of the not-always-so-roaring Twenties, is an only-in-America story of reinvention, rising above tragedy, and finding family.”—Lauren Willig, New York Times bestselling author of Band of SistersFor fans of Fiona Davis, Beatriz Williams, and Joanna Goodman, a mesmerizing historical novel from Kitty Zeldis, the author of Not Our Kind, about three women in 1920s New York City and the secrets they ho

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Book SynopsisFrom New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Chiaverini, a bold, revelatory novel about one of the great untold stories of World War I—the women of the U.S. Army Signal Corps, who broke down gender barriers in the military and battled a pandemic as they helped lead the Allies to victory.Trade Review“An eye-opening and detailed novel about remarkable female soldiers. . . Chiaverini weaves the intersecting threads of these brave women’s lives together, highlighting their deep sense of pride and duty.” — Kirkus Reviews on Switchboard Soldiers “Enchanting…Chiaverini brings her singular characters to life, including real historical figures, as they become united in the quest to serve their country. Fans of historical fiction will be captivated.” — Publishers Weekly on Switchboard Soldiers “So much new information is packed into this story that it becomes the best kind of history lesson…Chiaverini makes it easy to identify with and care about these women… The dangers of war are neatly integrated into daily lives and geographic location, and Chiaverini also addresses gender and race inequities and the insidious dangers of the spread of influenza on overseas troop transport.” — Library Journal (starred review) on Switchboard Soldiers “Chiaverini never loses her focus on her four extraordinarily courageous, resourceful, yet relatable narrators. Chiaverini’s many fans and every historical fiction reader who enjoys strong female characters, will find much to love in this revealing WWII novel.” — Booklist on Resistance Women “Chiaverini offers an intimate and historically sound exploration of the years leading up to and through WWII . . . exceptionally insightful, making for a sweeping and memorable WWII novel.” — Publishers Weekly on Resistance Women "On March 3, 1913, a day before President Wilson’s inauguration, suffragists marched down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC, to advocate for a constitutional amendment. In her latest women-focused historical novel, Chiaverini offers an impassioned account that pulls readers in, making the details feel freshly alive. This politically aware novel about a historic quest for democratic justice compels readers to contemplate everything that has and hasn’t changed regarding voting rights and gender and racial equality." — Booklist on The Women’s March “Undeniably valuable and timely, informative and insightful. Chiaverini's latest work of historical fiction weaves together the actions of three real women, advocating for social and legal change while also speaking to the tensions regarding race, class, and rhetorical arguments that prevent these groups from working together smoothly (if at all)." — Kirkus Reviews on The Women’s March “Chiaverini’s latest historical novel masterfully reimagines the real lives of Mildred Fish Harnack, Greta Lorke, Martha Dodd.… A riveting, complex tale of the courage of ordinary people.” — Kirkus Reviews on Resistance Women

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Book SynopsisFrom bestselling authors Janie Chang and Kate Quinn, a thrilling and unforgettable narrative about the intertwined lives of two wronged women, spanning from the chaos of the San Francisco earthquake to the glittering palaces of Versailles.San Francisco, 1906. In a city bustling with newly minted millionaires and scheming upstarts, two very different women hope to change their fortunes: Gemma, a golden-haired, silver-voiced soprano whose career desperately needs rekindling, and Suling, a petite and resolute Chinatown embroideress who is determined to escape an arranged marriage. Their paths cross when they are drawn into the orbit of Henry Thornton, a charming railroad magnate whose extraordinary collection of Chinese antiques includes the fabled Phoenix Crown, a legendary relic of Beijing?s fallen Summer Palace.His patronage offers Gemma and Suling the chance of a lifetime, but their lives are thrown into turmoil when a devastating earthquake rips San Francisco apart and Thornton disappears, leaving behind a mystery reaching further than anyone could have imagined... until the Phoenix Crown reappears five years later at a sumptuous Paris costume ball, drawing Gemma and Suling together in one last desperate quest for justice.

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Book SynopsisAcclaimed author Max Arthur specialises in first hand recollections of historical events. Previous titles include The Manchester United Air Crash; Above All Courage; Northern Ireland Soldiers Talking; Men of the Red Beret;, There Shall Be Wings: The RAF 1918 to the Present; The True Glory: The Royal Navy 1914 to Present.Trade ReviewAn extraordinary and immensely moving book -- Stephen FryThis extraordinary book is crammed with details, conjuring up the atmosphere of war as vividly as the frequent descriptions of appalling violence * Daily Telegraph *The words of the soldiers are as fresh as if they were written yesterday ... extraordinary * Mail on Sunday *These stories are so harrowing, and their witness so precise and devastating * The Times *The stories of these now long-dead vets simply jump off the page * FHM *

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Book SynopsisDrawing on a wealth of material from the vast Imperial War Museum Sound Archive, this book offers insight into life on the front line: from the day-to-day struggle of circumstances to the white heat of battle and the constant threat of injury or death. It features contributions from soldiers of both sides and of differing backgrounds.Trade ReviewJoshua Levine is an experienced oral historian and author of Forgotten Voices of the Blitz and the Battle for Britain and On a Wing and a Prayer. He has also had plays performed on the London stage and on Radio 4, as well as scripting a television documentary about 18th century London for BBC2.

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Book SynopsisC. K. Scott Moncrieff's celebrated translation of Proust's A La Recherche du Temps Perdu was first published in 1922 and was a work which would exhaust and consume the translator, leading to his early death at the age of just forty. Joseph Conrad told him, I was more interested and fascinated by your rendering than by Proust's creation': some literary figures even felt it was an improvement on the original.From the outside an enigma, Scott Moncrieff left a trail of writings that describe a man expert at living a paradoxical life: fervent Catholic convert and homosexual, gregarious party-goer and deeply lonely, interwar spy in Mussolini's Italy and public man of letters a man for whom honour was the most abiding principle. He was a decorated war hero, and his letters home are an unusually light take on day-to-day life on the front. Described as offensively brave', he was severely injured in 1917 and, convalescing in London, became a lynchpin of literary society frienTrade ReviewA first-rate, playful, moving biography -- Roger Lewis * The Times *Elegant and even-handed biography * Wall Street Journal *In a hugely readable and well researched biography, Findlay paints a triple portrait of her ancestor – as a devoted family man, homosexual Catholic and cultivated spy – who turns out to be a far more engaging and fascinating subject than one would ever have imagined -- David Robinson * Scotsman *The final revelation of Findlay’s book is that Moncrieff was far from the perfect Proustian of our imagination. Moncrieff is a lot more fun to be around than his careful sentences might suggest -- Adam Gopnik * The New Yorker *A fascinating read * The Economist *

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Book SynopsisCatherine Bailey is the author of two bestselling works of twentieth-century history: Black Diamonds and The Secret Rooms. She lives in London.Trade ReviewGripping. Reads like the best kind of mystery story. It is a tale of mistresses and heirlooms, cowardice and connivance * Sunday Times *'Astonishing, jaw-dropping, superb. Horrifying, extraordinary * Sunday Telegraph *Extraordinary, edge-of-the-seat, enthralling. All the ingredients of a lurid horror. The plot is thick with destroyed documents, decadent aristocracy, betrayed honour and curses * Metro *Compelling. A remarkable piece of research which throws a bright shaft of light on powerful people, hypocrisy and the first world war -- Jeremy Paxman * Guardian, Books of the Year *Wonderful . . . has everything: family intrigue and hatred, love and war, witches' curses, eccentricity, snobbery and a series of shocking secrets. No reader can finish it unmoved * Sunday Express *Teems with hypocrisy, deceit, parental manipulation and bullying. Bailey artfully shows how guilt, grief, pride and shame levied a heavy toll * Literary Review *An extraordinary detective operation -- John Julius NorwichExcellent, beautifully crafted, fascinating * Red *Excellent. A fine, suspenseful, atmospheric tale, a less melodramatic and more nuanced Downton Abbey * Daily Express *Bailey's fascinating book takes us to the heart of a family tragedy ... this is a horrifying story of love, despair, intrigue, snobbery and upper class eccentricity which reads like fiction but is amazingly - and shockingly - real * Lancashire Evening Post *The mysterious death of a Duke and a castle full of treacherous goings-on make The Secret Rooms a gripping read for fans of Downton Abbey. As thrilling as any fiction, Catherine Bailey uncovers the darkest depths of a family with plenty of skeletons in its closet * Good Housekeeping *

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Book SynopsisIn Millions Like Us Virginia Nicholson tells the story of the women''s Second World War, through a host of individual women''s experiences. We tend to see the Second World War as a man''s war, featuring Spitfire crews and brave deeds on the Normandy beaches. But in conditions of Total War millions of women - in the Services and on the Home Front - demonstrated that they were cleverer, more broad-minded and altogether more complex than anyone had ever guessed. Millions Like Us tells the story of how these women loved, suffered, laughed, grieved and dared; how they re-made their world in peacetime. And how they would never be the same again ...''Vividly entertaining, uplifting and humbling, Millions Like Us deserves to be a bestseller'' Bel Mooney, The Daily Mail''Passionate, fascinating, profoundly sympathetic'' Artemis Cooper, Evening Standard Virginia Nicholson was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and grew up in

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Book SynopsisTHE SUNDAY TIMES TOP 10 BESTSELLER''The best new narrative of the battle thus far, reflecting his gifts for fluent prose and moving quotations.'' Max Hastings, Sunday Times No conflict better encapsulates all that went wrong on the Western Front during World War I than the Battle of the Somme in 1916. The tragic loss of life and stoic endurance by troops who walked towards their death is an iconic image - but this critically-acclaimed bestseller, on the four months of battle, shows the extent to which the Allied armies were in fact able to break through the German front lines again and again. In eight years of research, Hugh Sebag-Montefiore -- the author of Dunkirk -- has found extraordinary new material from Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians, and the British - from heartbreaking diaries and letters to hitherto unseen Red Cross files - recounting their experiences amid the horror of war. It has been hailed as the best Trade ReviewMagisterial, exemplary, heartbreaking. So original is the material, and so inventive is Sebag-Montefiore's approach . . . that this well-known tale is rendered strange again. Written with great style and sensitivity, superbly illustrated with many original plates and beautifully drawn maps, Sebag-Montefiore's brilliant new study will set the benchmark for a generation -- Saul David * David Telegraph *Sebag-Montefiore tells it with gusto, a remarkable attention to detail . . . The sense of confusion, anxiety, uncertainty, and intrepid courage which characterized this disastrous campaign is captured more successfully than any other existing account -- Richard Overy * Daily Telegraph *A beautifully crafted, blow-by-blow account with deep insight into the lives of these diverse young men * Kirkus Reviews *In his previous book, Dunkirk, one of Sebag-Montefiore's talents as a historian is never to lose sight of the variety of individual experience. It is impossible to read this book without being stuck afresh by the ripples of mourning and anxiety spreading out from the battlefield in France -- Daniel Todman * The Financial Times *Hugh Sebag-Montefiore's heroes are the junior officers and the ordinary soldiers. Their voices emerge loud and clear in his pages . . . The best historians of the war have always made good use of the words written by the participants themselves, but few have done so as effectively as here -- Nick Rennison * Daily Mail *The author's combination of thoughtful analysis with first-hand testimony from army soldiers, cameramen and diarists lends a gritty immediacy -- Ian Thomson * Observer *Comprehensive, authoritative and meticulously researched... [Of recent publications] it is the weightiest and best written -- Simon Humphrey * Mail on Sunday *Having read almost everything that has been written on this battle, I can vouch this is the best account yet. -- Gerard DeGroot * The Times *Comprehensive, authoritative and meticulously researched... [Of recent publications] it is the weightiest and best written. -- Simon Humphrey * Mail on Sunday *

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Book SynopsisHailed by George Bernard Shaw as ''useful [corrective] to the romantic conception of war'', R.C. Sherriff''s Journey''s End is an unflinching vision of life in the trenches towards the end of the First World War, published in Penguin Classics.Set in the First World War, Journey''s End concerns a group of British officers on the front line and opens in a dugout in the trenches in France. Raleigh, a new eighteen-year-old officer fresh out of English public school, joins the besieged company of his friend and cricketing hero Stanhope, and finds him dramatically changed. Laurence Olivier starred as Stanhope in the first performance of Journey''s End in 1928; the play was an instant stage success and remains a remarkable anti-war classic.R.C. Sherriff (1896-1975) joined the army shortly after the outbreak of the First World War, serving as a captain in the East Surrey regiment. After the war, an interest in amateur theatricals led him to try his hand

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Book SynopsisPresenting the desperate conflict of the First World War through the eyes of an ordinary German soldier, Ernst Jünger''s Storm of Steel is translated by Michael Hofmann in Penguin Modern Classics.''As though walking through a deep dream, I saw steel helmets approaching through the craters. They seemed to sprout from the fire-harrowed soil like some iron harvest.''A memoir of astonishing power, savagery and ashen lyricism, Storm of Steel depicts Ernst Jünger''s experience of combat on the front line - leading raiding parties, defending trenches against murderous British incursions, and simply enduring as shells tore his comrades apart. One of the greatest books to emerge from the catastrophe of the First World War, it illuminates like no other book not only the horrors but also the fascination of a war that made men keep fighting for four long years.Ernst Jünger (1895-1998) the son of a wealthy chemist, ran away from home to join the Foreign LegiTrade ReviewUndoubtedly the most powerful memoir of any war I have ever read ... Storm of Steel combines the most astonishing literary gifts with absorption with war in every detail. It has German loyalties and a German sensibility, but not a trace of propaganda. It is particular, yet universal ... What Jünger saw and recorded was, to use his own word, 'primordial'. It takes great art to convey that appalling simplicity -- Charles Moore * Telegraph *Storm of Steel is what so many books claim to be but are not: a classic account of war * Evening Standard *Hofmann's interpretation is superb * The Times *Unique in the literature of this or any other war is its brilliantly vivid conjuration of the immediacy and intensity of battle * Telegraph *

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Book Synopsis''A breathtaking, magisterial panorama, telling the epic story of post-war anarchy, dying empires and rising nation states. It makes us rethink our understanding of Europe''s twentieth century'' David Motadel, The Times Literary SupplementFor the Western allies 11 November 1918 has always been a solemn date - the end of fighting which had destroyed a generation, and also a vindication of a terrible sacrifice with the total collapse of their principal enemies: the German Empire, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. But for much of the rest of Europe this was a day with no meaning, as a continuing, nightmarish series of conflicts engulfed country after country. In this highly original, gripping book Robert Gerwarth asks us to think again about the true legacy of the First World War. ''Lucid, incisive and packed with fascinating details'' Financial Times, Books of the Year ''Important and timely ... obliges us to reconsider a pTrade ReviewThis narrative of continent-wide chaos makes it easier to understand why order came to seem a supremely desirable objective in 1930s Europe, trumping freedom ... it helps us understand why few wars reach tidy conclusions: once a society has suspended its instinctive, social and legal prejudice against killing, it often proves hard to restore. -- Max Hastings * The Sunday Times *Pulls together a complex narrative about the uneasy peace of the late Twenties and shine a piercing light into darkened corners of history ... an unnerving reminder of how stubbornly some geopolitical fault-lines endure -- Sinclair McKay * The Telegraph *A mixture of fast-paced narrative and fluent analysis ... Gerwarth demonstrates with an impressive concentration of detail that in central, eastern and south-eastern Europe the carnage of the first world war by no means came to an end, as it did for the British and French, in late 1918. -- Tony Barber * Financial Times *Combining a big-picture overview with close-up detail - we hear the voices of soldiers, politicians, civilians - Gerwarth has written a vivid if disturbing account -- Matthew Price * National *Searing and vivid ... a timely reminder that the roots of century-long violence can be traced back to the cataclysmic end of the Great War -- Richard Overy * Literary Review *A thorough explanation for the rise of the nationalist and fascist groups who set the stage for World War II. * Kirkus Reviews *Gerwarth's fascinating and finely crafted book is a rich combination of military, political, cultural and social history. He makes good use of literary sources and witness testimony to bring the events he narrates to life ... an impressive work of highly accessible scholarship -- Geoffrey Roberts * Irish Times *This is an important and compelling book with a fascinating and chilling narrative ... Gerwarth reveals how the forgotten postwar violence comprised a key step on Europe's descent into darkness. -- Alexander Watson * BBC History Magazine *While Gerwarth's warfare theories are cogent and convincing, he never loses sight of the human dimension. He skillfully avoids the danger of getting bogged down in a mass of detail, livening up his narrative by using contemporary quotes from politicians, soldiers and writers. One mark of a good history book is that it allows the reader to see familiar events from a new perspective. In this respect, The Vanquished is an exceptional history book. -- Andrew Lynch * Sunday Post Business Magazine *[Gerwarth] shines a light on what is, from a western European point of view, a somewhat obscure and relatively short period of time ... from the layman's vantage point, it is so well written that it reads like a novel. Tragically, for the people killed, wounded and forced to flee from their homes, it is not. This book is well worth the read. -- Frank MacGabhann * Irish Independent *This fine and timely study makes a compelling case for the argument that the bloody aftermath of the war did more to destroy European civilisation than the declarations of war in 1914 ... at a time when Vladimir Putin seems intent on regaining Tsarist Russia's frontiers, and the map of the Middle East drawn by the victorious powers becomes ever more blurred, we might well ask whether the First World War has ended yet. -- A.W. Purdue * Times Higher Education Supplement *A clear and excellent account of the abrupt break-up of the Habsburg, Hohenzollern, Ottoman and Romanov empires and the difficult birth of their successor states during 1917-23 * History of War Reviews *This is difficult, often horrifying reading, but Gerwarth provides an essential contribution to our understanding of the interwar years. -- Jay Freeman * Booklist *

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Book Synopsis''Superb ... likely to become a classic'' ObserverIn the summer of 1914 most of Europe plunged into a war so catastrophic that it unhinged the continent''s politics and beliefs in a way that took generations to recover from. The disaster terrified its survivors, shocked that a civilization that had blandly assumed itself to be a model for the rest of the world had collapsed into a chaotic savagery beyond any comparison. In 1939 Europeans would initiate a second conflict that managed to be even worse - a war in which the killing of civilians was central and which culminated in the Holocaust.To Hell and Back tells this story with humanity, flair and originality. Kershaw gives a compelling narrative of events, but he also wrestles with the most difficult issues that the events raise - with what it meant for the Europeans who initiated and lived through such fearful times - and what this means for us.Trade ReviewA great achievement ... There could hardly be a more judicious guide to this bloody terrain ... a stark lesson in man's capacity for evil -- Dominic Sandbrook * The Sunday Times *A triumph ... one of a tiny handful of historians whose books will still be read in 100 years -- Laurence Rees * The Mail on Sunday *Chilling epic-size history ... should be required reading -- Harold Evans * The New York Times *The story of how the Old World plunged toward hell for 30 years ... There is no man better qualified than Kershaw to take us through the dark valleys of the world wars and the two sombre intervening decades ... fair-minded, deeply researched and highly readable -- Brendan Simms * Wall Street Journal *We are in the hands of a master historian -- Nigel Jones * Spectator *Few authors would have the ability, and perhaps the determination, to take on the history of both world wars and the connecting decades at this level of sophistication, depth and breadth -- Robert Tombs * The Times *Authoritative -- Nicholas Shakespeare * Telegraph *Kershaw leads his readers through this complex history in a clear and compelling manner -- Joanna Bourke * Prospect *

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Book SynopsisWorld War I in 100 Objects by Peter Doyle is a dynamic social history and perfect gift for history lovers. General readers and history buffs alike have made bestsellers of books like A History of the World in 100 Objects. In that tradition, this handsome commemorative volume gives a unique perspective on one of the most pivotal and volatile events of modern history.In World War I in 100 Objects, military historian Peter Doyle shares a fascinating collection of items, from patriotic badges worn by British citizens to field equipment developed by the United States. Beautifully photographed, each item is accompanied by the unique story it tells about the war, its strategy, its innovations, and the people who fought it.

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Book SynopsisAn astonishing retelling of twentieth-century history from the Ottoman perspective, delivering profound new insights into World War I and the contemporary Middle EastBetween 1911 and 1922, a series of wars would engulf the Ottoman Empire and its successor states, in which the central conflict, of course, is World War I—a story we think we know well. As Sean McMeekin shows us in this revelatory new history of what he calls the “wars of the Ottoman succession,” we know far less than we think. The Ottoman Endgame brings to light the entire strategic narrative that led to an unstable new order in postwar Middle East—much of which is still felt today.The Ottoman Endgame: War, Revolution, and the Making of the Modern Middle East draws from McMeekin’s years of groundbreaking research in newly opened Ottoman and Russian archives. With great storytelling flair, McMeekin makes new the epic stories we know from the Ottoman front, from Gallipoli to the exploits of Lawrence in Arabia, and introduces a vast range of new stories to Western readers. His accounts of the lead-up to World War I and the Ottoman Empire’s central role in the war itself offers an entirely new and deeper vision of the conflict. Harnessing not only Ottoman and Russian but also British, German, French, American, and Austro-Hungarian sources, the result is a truly pioneering work of scholarship that gives full justice to a multitiered war involving many belligerents. McMeekin also brilliantly reconceives our inherited Anglo-French understanding of the war’s outcome and the collapse of the empire that followed. The book chronicles the emergence of modern Turkey and the carve-up of the rest of the Ottoman Empire as it has never been told before, offering a new perspective on such issues as the ethno-religious bloodletting and forced population transfers which attended the breakup of empire, the Balfour Declaration, the toppling of the caliphate, and the partition of Iraq and Syria—bringing the contemporary consequences into clear focus.Every so often, a work of history completely reshapes our understanding of a subject of enormous historical and contemporary importance. The Ottoman Endgame is such a book, an instantly definitive and thrilling example of narrative history as high art.

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Book SynopsisBoth heartbreaking and sharply funny...Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey is brilliant and surprising at every turn.—Rebecca Makkai, Pulitzer finalist for The Great BelieversA heart-tugging and gorgeously written novel based on the incredible true story of a WWI messenger pigeon and the soldiers whose lives she forever altered, from the author of Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk. From the green countryside of England and the gray canyons of Wall Street come two unlikely heroes: one a pigeon and the other a soldier. Answering the call to serve in the war to end all wars, neither Cher Ami, the messenger bird, nor Charles Whittlesey, the army officer, can anticipate how their lives will briefly intersect in a chaotic battle in the forests of France, where their wills will be tested, their fates will be shaped, and their lives will emerge forever altered. A saga of hope and duty, love and endurance, as well as the claustrophobia of fa

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Book SynopsisAn Englishwoman of no particular fame living in World War I Brussels started a secret diary in September 1916. Aware that her thoughts could put her in danger with German authorities, she never wrote her name on the diary and ran to hide it every time the Boches came to inspect the house. The diary survived the war and ended up in a Belgian archive, forgotten for nearly a century until historians Sophie De Schaepdrijver and Tammy M. Proctor discovered it and the remarkable woman who wrote it: Mary Thorp, a middle-aged English governess working for a wealthy Belgian-Russian family in Brussels.As a foreigner and a woman, Mary Thorp offers a unique window into life under German occupation in Brussels (the largest occupied city of World War I) and in the uncertain early days of the peace. Her diary describes the roar of cannons in the middle of the night, queues for food and supplies in the shops, her work for a wartime charity, news from an interned godson in Germany, along with elegant dinners with powerful diplomats and the educational progress of her beloved charges.Mary Thorp''s sharp and bittersweet reflections testify to the daily strains of living under enemy occupation, comment on the events of the war as they unfolded, and ultimately serve up a personal story of self-reliance and endurance. De Schaepdrijver and Proctor''s in-depth commentary situate this extraordinary woman in her complex political, social, and cultural context, thus providing an unusual chance to engage with the Great War on an intimate and personal level.Table of ContentsIntroduction: "Still I feel I did my duty": Diary of an English Governess, 1916-1919 Historical Background: "Life in an Occupied City: Brussels" Mary Thorp's Diary Part 1: No "eleventh hour": September 1916 - February 1917 Part 2: "Qui vivra verra": March - December 1917 Part 3: "We still hear the same eternal cannon": January - October 1918 Part 4: "The Book of Peace!!!": October 1918 - January 1919 Epilogue Notes Appendix: Thorp Family Tree Bibliography

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Book SynopsisTense Future falls into two parts. The first develops a critical account of total war discourse and addresses the resistant potential of acts, including acts of writing, before a future that looks barred or predetermined by war. Part two shifts the focus to long interwar narratives that pit both their scale and their formal turbulence against total war''s portrait of the social totality, producing both ripostes and alternatives to that portrait in the practice of literary encyclopedism. The book''s introduction grounds both parts in the claim that industrialized warfare, particularly the aerial bombing of cities, intensifies an under-examined form of collective traumatization: a pretraumatic syndrome in which the anticipation of future-conditional violence induces psychic wounds. Situating this claim in relation to other scholarship on critical futurities, Saint-Amour discusses its ramifications for trauma studies, historical narratives generally, and the historiography of the interwarTrade ReviewBy moving our vision from earth to sky, from soldiers in the trenches to civilians under air raids, Paul Saint-Amour makes rich and surprising our understanding of the twentieth-century and its literature. Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Ford Madox Ford, and we ourselves emerge in the arresting light of this first modern collective anxiety. * Elaine Scarry, author of Thermonuclear Monarchy: Choosing Between Democracy and Doom *This book is a tour de force, introducing an entirely new approach to the modernist imagination. Saint-Amour makes us hear the undertones of menace in interwar literature, thereby reconfiguring modernist fiction as meditations on disasters to come. * Jay Winter, author of Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History *Paul Saint-Amour reinterprets culture during the years between World War I and World War II as an era of anxious anticipation. Thoughtful, penetrating, and important, Tense Future expands our understanding of war's destructive power. * Mary L. Dudziak, author of War Time: An Idea, Its History, Its Consequences *Tense Future moves fluently through the cultural records of the First World War, interwar, Second World War, and Cold War. Creating a wholly new archive, Saint-Amour does nothing less than shift the tense of imaginative action in the literature of major record: from memory, which Paul Fussell established as its primary imaginative circumstance, to anticipation; from reverie to dread. Our way of reading the literature of a century of war will be changed by this comprehensive and compelling account. * Vincent Sherry, author of Modernism and the Reinvention of Decadence *Intricately crafted and thoroughly documented, Tense Future not only redefines the modern epic but also lays the groundwork for reconceptualizing the interwar period and perspectives on temporality. * W. T. Martin, CHOICE *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ; Introduction: Traumatic Earliness ; I. Bukimi ; II. The Precincts of Time ; III. Collective Psychosis ; Facing Trauma ; Critical Futurities ; Three Interwars ; Weak Modernism ; Part One ; 1. On the Partiality of Total War ; The Case of L. E. O. Charlton ; Intimations of Totality ; Interwar Air Power Theory ; Rival Preemptions of Law and War ; National Totality and Colonial Air Control ; Bombing Display I ; Bombing Display II ; 2. Perpetual Suspense: Virginia Woolf's Wartime Gothic ; Morphologies of Suspense ; Mark Time ; Mrs. Dalloway and the Gaze of Total War ; The Years: Immunities Lost and Found ; <"Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid>" ; 3. Fantasias of the Archive: Hamilton's Savage and Jenkinson's Manual ; A Promise of Terror to Come ; Savage Foreclosures ; Declining Fertility ; Jenkinson's Manual ; War Archives: Theory and Performance ; Thoughts on Archives in an Air Raid ; The Death Drive of the Archive ; Part Two ; 4. Encyclopedic Modernism ; Against Epic ; Revisiting the Encyclopedie ; The Eleventh ; Encyclopedic Narrative ; Modern Epic ; Pace Bersani ; 5. The Shield of Ulysses ; Ulysses' Encyclopedism ; Encyclopedia Prophetica ; Urban Violence and Amity Lines ; Theater of Total War ; Scattering ; 6. War Shadowing: Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End ; Uncyclopedia Britannica ; Total Worry ; Futures in Furniture ; Conclusion: Perpetual Interwar ; Appendix: Chapter Abstracts ; Bibliography ; Index

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Book SynopsisSigned on June 28, 1919 between Germany and the principal Allied powers, the Treaty of Versailles formally ended World War I. Problematic from the very beginning, even its contemporaries saw the treaty as a mediocre compromise, creating a precarious order in Europe and abroad and destined to fall short of ensuring lasting peace. At the time, observers read the treaty through competing lenses: a desire for peace after five years of disastrous war, demands for vengeance against Germany, the uncertain future of colonialism, and, most alarmingly, the emerging threat of Bolshevism. A century after its signing, we can look back at how those developments evolved through the twentieth century, evaluating the treaty and its consequences with unprecedented depth of perspective.The author of several award-winning books, Michael S. Neiberg provides a lucid and authoritative account of the Treaty of Versailles, explaining the enormous challenges facing those who tried to put the world back together after the global destruction of the World War I. Rather than assessing winners and losers, this compelling book analyzes the many subtle factors that influenced the treaty and the dominant, at times ambiguous role of the Big Four leaders: Woodrow Wilson of the United States, David Lloyd George of Great Britain, Vittorio Emanuele Orlando of Italy, and Georges Clémenceau of France.The Treaty of Versailles was not solely responsible for the catastrophic war that crippled Europe and the world just two decades later, but it played a critical role. As Neiberg reminds us, to understand decolonization, World War II, the Cold War, and even the complex world we inhabit today, there is no better place to begin than with World War I and the treaty that tried, and perhaps failed, to end it.Table of ContentsPreface 1. From war to armistice to peace conference 2. The big three (or maybe four) 3. Ideals versus interests 4. Drafting the treaty 5. To bed, sick of life 6. War to end war? References Further reading Index

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Book Synopsis''Highly Recommended'' CHOICE A fascinating account of the experimental innovations and theoretical breakthroughs in nuclear physics in the period between the two world wars told through the lives and personalities of the physicists who made them. The two decades between the first and second world wars saw the emergence of nuclear physics as the dominant field of experimental and theoretical physics, owing to the work of an international cast of gifted physicists. Prominent among them were Ernest Rutherford, George Gamow, the husband and wife team of Frédéric and Irène Joliot-Curie, John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, Gregory Breit and Eugene Wigner, Lise Meitner and Otto Robert Frisch, the brash Ernest Lawrence, the prodigious Enrico Fermi, and the incomparable Niels Bohr.Their experimental and theoretical work arose from a quest to understand nuclear phenomena; it was not motivated by a desire to find a practical application for nuclear energy. In this sense, these physicists lived in an ''Age of Innocence''. They did not, however, live in isolation. Their research reflected their idiosyncratic personalities; it was shaped by the physical and intellectual environments of the countries and institutions in which they worked. It was also buffeted by the political upheavals after the Great War: the punitive postwar treaties, the runaway inflation in Germany and Austria, the Great Depression, and the intellectual migration from Germany and later from Austria and Italy.Their pioneering experimental and theoretical achievements in the interwar period therefore are set within their personal, institutional, and political contexts. Both domains and their mutual influences are conveyed by quotations from autobiographies, biographies, recollections, interviews, correspondence, and other writings of physicists and historians.Trade ReviewOverall, this work would serve as an excellent overview of both the scientific and the political situation in Europe between the wars... Summing Up: Highly Recommended. * CHOICE *The Age of Innocence is a masterful and authoritative history of nuclear physics during the 1920s and 1930s, constituting perhaps the magnum opus of Roger H. Stuewer, a senior scholar with a decades-long record of leadership in the history of physics...While the history in The Age of Innocence is a generally familiar one, the richness of Stuewer's detailed and authoritative account should make it required reading for all. * Mary Jo Nye, Oregon State University, ISIS *This volume offers a fascinating glimpse of the internal workings of scientists in a nascent period of atomic and nuclear physics. Stuewer does a brilliant job of first foreshadowing, and then discussing outright, the impact of fascism on so many of these scientists. Of course, anyone already familiar with the story knows the conclusion. The discovery of nuclear fission, and its ultimate role in the development of the first atomic bomb, hovers over the narrative from the beginning. Overall, this work would serve as an excellent overview of both the scientific and the political situation in Europe between the wars. * Todd Timmons, University of Arkansas *[Stuewer] has produced a masterful single-volume history and exhaustive reference of inter-war nuclear physics, a testament to his decades of work in this area. This volume will especially be a keeper reference even for readers closely familiar with its subject matter. * Cameron Reed, American Journal of Physics *This excellently written and extremely well researched account is likely to become a classic text for its subject-matter. Any physicist who is interested in the history of our subject during one of its most critical formative periods should acquire this book, from which I have learnt a lot and which I thoroughly recommend. * Peter Bussey, Contemporary Physics *Table of Contents1: Cambridge and the Cavendish 2: European and Nuclear Disintegration 3: Vienna and the Institute for Radium Research 4: The Cambridge-Vienna Controversy 5: The Quantum-Mechanical Nucleus 6: Nuclear Electrons and Nuclear Structure 7: New Particles 8: New Machines 9: Nuclear Physicists at the Crosswroads 10: Exiles and Immigrants 11: Artificial Radioactivity 12: Bet Decay Redux, Slow Neutrons, Bohr and his Realm 13: New Theories of Nuclear Reactions 14: The Plague Spreads to Austria and Italy 15: The New World 1: Cambridge and the Cavendish 2: European and Nuclear Disintegration 3: Vienna and the Institute for Radium Research 4: The Cambridge-Vienna Controversy 5: The Quantum-Mechanical Nucleus 6: Nuclear Electrons and Nuclear Structure 7: New Particles 8: New Machines 9: Nuclear Physicists at the Crossroads 10: Exiles and Immigrants 11: Artificial Radioactivity 12: Bet Decay Redux, Slow Neutrons, Bohr and his Realm 13: New Theories of Nuclear Reactions 14: The Plague Spreads to Austria and Italy 15: The New World

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Book SynopsisVivid, succinct, and highly accessible, this first volume (of two) begins with the origins and consequences of the medieval myth of the 'Reich,' which was to experience a fateful renaissance in the twentieth century, and ends with the collapse of the first German democracy.Trade Review...destined to become a must-have for both scholars and students of German history. Combining skilful and fluent narrative with insightful analysis, his history of modern Germany presents the reader with a vivid and detailed picture of the German nation. * Journal of the Historical Association *...this book has much to offer. * Róisín Healy, European History Quarterly *Germany: The Long Road West 1789-1933 is a magnificent examination of a country which, along with Russia, possesses a history that is arguably the most complicated in Europe. This book will be an immense asset to academics, students and, indeed, anyone with a serious interest in German history. * Marcus Papadopoulos, Tribune *[an] excellent book * Contemporary Review *magisterial...Winkler's magnum opus. * TLS *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1: Legacy of a Millennium 2: Hampered by Progress 1789DS1830 3: Liberalism in Crisis 1830DS1850 4: Unity before Liberty 1850DS1871 5: The Transformation of Nationalism 1871DS1890 6: World Policy and World War 1890DS1918 7: The Impaired Republic 1918DS1933 Looking Ahead

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Book SynopsisVivid, succinct, and highly accessible, Heinrich Winkler''s magisterial history of modern Germany offers the history of a nation and its people through two turbulent centuries. It is the story of a country that, while always culturally identified with the West, long resisted the political trajectories of its neighbours.This second and final volume begins at the point of the collapse of the first German democracy, and ends with the joining of East and West Germany in the reunification of 1990. Winkler offers a brilliant synthesis of complex events and illuminates them with fresh insights. He analyses the decisions that shaped the country''s triumphs and catastrophes, interweaving high politics with telling vignettes about the German people and their own self-perception.The two volumes of Germany: The Long Road West, exploring the history of the German lands from the final days of the Holy Roman Empire to the very first of a reunified state in the late twentieth century, will be welcomed by scholars, students, and anyone wishing to understand a most complex and contradictory past.Trade ReviewReview from previous edition A masterpiece, providing a comprehensive and detailed analysis of Germany and the German nation from the Third Reich to reunification...an engaging magnum opus that will appeal to everyone with an interest in German history. * Sandra Barkhof, History *...destined to become a must-have for both scholars and students of German history. Combining skilful and fluent narrative with insightful analysis, his history of modern Germany presents the reader with a vivid and detailed picture of the German nation. * Journal of the Historical Association *Winkler confirms his status as one of the world's leading authorities on German history; his account of the country's complex history is unlikely to be surpassed for many years to come and it should be read by anyone wishing to understand the history of the European Union's most important and influential member. * Marcus Papadopoulos, Tribune *magisterial...Winkler's magnum opus. * TLS *an impressive accomplishment... very much worth reading * Jonathan Sperber *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1: The German Catastrophe 1933-45 2: Democracy and Dictatorship 1945-1961 3: Two States, One Nation 1961-1973 4: Rapprochment and Estrangement 1973-1989 5: Unity in Freedom 1989-90 Farewell to Separate Paths: looking back and looking ahead

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