Search results for ""author christopher clark""

The pacy, sensitive and formidably argued history of the causes of the First World War, from acclaimed historian and author Christopher ClarkFINANCIAL TIMES BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2014SUNDAY TIMES and INDEPENDENT BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2012Winner of the Los Angeles Times History Book Prize 2014The moments that it took Gavrilo Princip to step forward to the stalled car and shoot dead Franz Ferdinand and his wife were perhaps the most fateful of the modern era. An act of terrorism of staggering efficiency, it fulfilled its every aim: it would liberate Bosnia from Habsburg rule and it created a powerful new Serbia, but it also brought down four great empires, killed millions of men and destroyed a civilization. What made a seemingly prosperous and complacent Europe so vulnerable to the impact of this assassination? In The Sleepwalkers Christopher Clark retells the story of the outbreak of the First World War and its causes. Above all, it shows how the failure to understand the seriousness of the chaotic, near genocidal fighting in the Balkans would drag Europe into catastrophe.Reviews:'Formidable ... one of the most impressive and stimulating studies of the period ever published' Max Hastings, Sunday Times'Easily the best book ever written on the subject ... A work of rare beauty that combines meticulous research with sensitive analysis and elegant prose. The enormous weight of its quality inspires amazement and awe ... Academics should take note: Good history can still be a good story' Washington Post'A lovingly researched work of the highest scholarship. It is hard to believe we will ever see a better narrative of what was perhaps the biggest collective blunder in the history of international relations' Niall Ferguson'[Reading The Sleepwalkers], it is as if a light had been turned on a half-darkened stage of shadowy characters cursing among themselves without reason ... [Clark] demolishes the standard view ... The brilliance of Clark's far-reaching history is that we are able to discern how the past was genuinely prologue ... In conception, steely scholarship and piercing insights, his book is a masterpiece' Harold Evans, New York Times Book Review'Impeccably researched, provocatively argued and elegantly written ... a model of scholarship' Sunday Times Books of the Year'Superb ... effectively consigns the old historical consensus to the bin ... It's not often that one has the privilege of reading a book that reforges our understanding of one of the seminal events of world history' Mail Online'A monumental new volume ... Revelatory, even revolutionary ... Clark has done a masterful job explaining the inexplicable' Boston Globe'Superb ... One of the great mysteries of history is how Europe's great powers could have stumbled into World War I ... This is the single best book I have read on this important topic' Fareed Zakaria'A meticulously researched, superbly organized, and handsomely written account Military HistoryClark is a masterly historian ... His account vividly reconstructs key decision points while deftly sketching the context driving them ... A magisterial work' Wall Street Journal'This compelling examination of the causes of World War I deserves to become the new standard one-volume account of that contentious subject' Foreign Affairs'A brilliant contribution' Times Higher Education'Clark is fully alive to the challenges of the subject ... He provides vivid portraits of leading figures ... [He] also gives a rich sense of what contemporaries believed was at stake in the crises leading up to the war' Irish Times'In recent decades, many analysts had tended to put most blame for the disaster [of the First World War] on Germany. Clark strongly renews an older interpretation which sees the statesmen of many countries as blundering blindly together into war' Stephen Howe, Independent Books of the YearAbout the author:Christopher Clark is Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of St Catharine's College. He is the author of The Politics of Conversion, Kaiser Wilhelm II and Iron Kingdom. Widely praised around the world, Iron Kingdom became a major bestseller. He has been awarded the Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

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From the author of the national bestseller The Sleepwalkers, a book about how the exercise of power is shaped by different concepts of timeThis groundbreaking book presents new perspectives on how the exercise of power is shaped by different notions of time. Acclaimed historian Christopher Clark draws on four key figures from German history—Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg-Prussia, Frederick the Great, Otto von Bismarck, and Adolf Hitler—to look at history through a temporal lens and ask how historical actors and their regimes embody unique conceptions of time.Inspired by the insights of Reinhart Koselleck and François Hartog, two pioneers of the “temporal turn” in historiography, Clark shows how Friedrich Wilhelm rejected the notion of continuity with the past, believing instead that a sovereign must liberate the state from the entanglements of tradition to choose freely among different possible futures. He demonstrates how Frederick the Great abandoned this paradigm for a neoclassical vision of history in which sovereign and state transcend time altogether, and how Bismarck believed that the statesman’s duty was to preserve the timeless permanence of the state amid the torrent of historical change. Clark describes how Hitler did not seek to revolutionize history like Stalin and Mussolini, but instead sought to evade history altogether, emphasizing timeless racial archetypes and a prophetically foretold future.Elegantly written and boldly innovative, Time and Power takes readers from the Thirty Years’ War to the fall of the Third Reich, revealing the connection between political power and the distinct temporalities of the leaders who wield it.

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New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • From the bestselling author of The Sleepwalkers comes an epic history of the 1848 revolutions that swept Europe, and the charismatic figures who propelled them forward “Refreshingly original . . . Familiar characters are given vibrancy and previously unknown players emerge from the shadows.”—The Times (UK)A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: New Yorker, The Economist, Financial TimesAs history, the uprisings of 1848 have long been overshadowed by the French Revolution of 1789 and the Russian revolutions of the early twentieth century. And yet in 1848 nearly all of Europe was aflame with conflict. Parallel political tumults spread like brush fire across the entire continent, leading to significant changes that continue to shape our world today. These battles for the future were fought with one eye kept squarely on the past: The men and women of

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A Telegraph, Sunday Times, Economist and TLS Book of the Year'One of the best history books you will read this decade' History TodayAn exhilarating reappraisal of one of the most dramatic years in European history, from the acclaimed author of The SleepwalkersThere can be few more exciting or frightening moments in European history than the spring of 1848. Almost as if by magic, in city after city, from Palermo to Paris to Venice, huge crowds gathered, sometimes peaceful and sometimes violent, and the political order that had held sway since the defeat of Napoleon simply collapsed.Christopher Clark's spectacular new book recreates with verve, wit and insight this extraordinary period. Some rulers gave up at once, others fought bitterly, but everywhere new politicians, beliefs and expectations surged forward. The role of women in society, the end of slavery, the right to work, national independence and the final emancipation of the Jews all became live issues.In a brilliant series of set-pieces, Clark conjures up both this ferment of new ideas and then the increasingly ruthless and effective series of counter-attacks launched by regimes who still turned out to have many cards to play. But even in defeat, exiles spread the ideas of 1848 around the world and - for better and sometimes much worse - a new and very different Europe emerged from the wreckage.

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Winner of the Wolfson History Prize, Christopher Clark's Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia 1600-1947 is a compelling account of a country that played a pivotal role in Europe's fortunes and fundamentally shaped our world. Prussia began as a medieval backwater, but transformed itself into a major European power and the force behind the creation of the German empire, until it was finally abolished by the Allies after the Second World War. With great flair and authority, Christopher Clark describes Prussia's great battles, dynastic marriages and astonishing reversals of fortune, its brilliant and charismatic leaders from the Hohenzollerns of Brandenburg to Bismarck and Frederick the Great, the military machine and the progressive, enlightened values on which it was built. 'Fascinating ... masterly ... littered with intriguing detail and wry observation' Richard Overy, Daily Telegraph 'A terrific book ... the definitive history of this much-maligned state' Daily Telegraph Books of the Year 'You couldn't have the triumph and the tragedy of Prussia better told' Observer 'A magisterial history of Europe's only extinct power' Financial Times 'Exemplary ... an illuminating, profoundly satisfying work of history' The New York Times Christopher Clark is a lecturer in Modern European History at St Catharine's College, University of Cambridge. He is also the author of Kaiser Wilhelm II: A Life in Power.

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From the bestselling author of The Sleepwalkers, a book about how the exercise of power is shaped by different concepts of timeThis groundbreaking book presents new perspectives on how the exercise of power is shaped by different notions of time. Acclaimed historian Christopher Clark draws on four key figures from German history—Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg-Prussia, Frederick the Great, Otto von Bismarck, and Adolf Hitler—to look at history through a temporal lens and ask how historical actors and their regimes embody unique conceptions of time. Elegantly written and boldly innovative, Time and Power reveals the connection between political power and the distinct temporalities of the leaders who wield it.

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Christopher Clark's Kaiser Wilhelm II: A Life in Power is a short, fascinating and accessible biography of one of the 20th century's most important figures.King of Prussia, German Emperor, war leader and defeated exile, Kaiser Wilhelm II was one of the most important - and most controversial - figures in the history of twentieth-century Europe. But how much power did he really have?Christopher Clark, winner of the Wolfson prize for his history of Prussia, Iron Kingdom, follows Kaiser Wilhelm's political career from his youth at the Hohenzollern court through the turbulent decades of the Wilhelmine era into global war and the collapse of Germany in 1918, to his last days. He asks: what was his true role in the events that led to the outbreak of the First World War? What was the nature and extent of his control? What were his political goals and his success in achieving them? How did he project authority and exercise influence? And how did his people really view him?Through original research, Clark presents a fresh new interpretation of this contentious figure, focusing on how his thirty-year reign from 1888 to 1918 affected Germany, and the rest of Europe, for years to come. 'Clark's fresh and enlightening history brings the Kaiser's life into critical and illuminating review' German History Christopher Clark is a lecturer in Modern European History at St Catharine's College, University of Cambridge. His book Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia 1600 to 1947 was the winner of the Wolfson Prize for History.

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''One of the best history books you will read this decade'' History Today''Fascinating, suspenseful, revelatory, alive'' The TimesThere can be few more exciting or frightening moments in European history than the spring of 1848. As if by magic, in city after city, from Palermo to Paris to Venice, huge crowds gathered, sometimes peaceful and sometimes violent, and the political order that had held sway since the defeat of Napoleon simply collapsed.Christopher Clark''s spectacular new book recreates with verve, wit and insight this extraordinary period. Some rulers gave up at once, others fought bitterly, but everywhere new politicians, beliefs and expectations surged forward. The role of women in society, the end of slavery, the right to work, national independence and the emancipation of the Jews all became live issues.Clark conjures up both this ferment of new ideas and then the increasingly ruthless and effective series of count

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An intellectual tour de force: the major essays of the esteemed author of international bestseller The Sleepwalkers Christopher Clark's The Sleepwalkers has become one of the most influential history books of our century: a remarkable rethinking of the origins of the First World War, which has had a huge impact on how we see both the past and the present. For the many readers who found the narrative voice, craftsmanship and originality of Clark's writing so compelling, Prisoners of Time will be a book filled with surprises and enjoyment. Bringing together many of Clark's major essays, Prisoners of Time raises a host of questions about how we think about the past, and both the value and pitfalls of history as a discipline. The book includes brilliant writing on German subjects: from assessments of Kaiser Wilhelm and Bismarck to the painful story of General von Blaskowitz, a traditional Prussian military man who accommodated himself to the horrors of the Third Reich. There is a fascinating essay on attempts to convert Prussian Jews to Christianity, and insights into everything from Brexit to the significance of battles. Perhaps the most important piece in the book is 'The Dream of Nebuchadnezzar', a virtuoso meditation on the nature of political power down the ages, which will become essential reading for anyone drawn to the meaning of history.

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"Whoever reads these essays—and whether they follow the book from cover to cover, or dip into chapters at random—will find the rich abundance and variety of early American scholarship set out before them. Readers new to the field will grasp a sense of its expansiveness and possibilities, but seasoned scholars, too, will find here a feast of insights and possibilities that will engage, provoke, and inspire them."—from the Foreword, by Christopher Clark How is American history written? In a penetrating series of review essays, prize-winning author Alan Taylor provides his own answer to this question. In the pages of The New Republic, he has regularly scrutinized the writing of the most interesting historians of early American history. Together these reviews provide the general reader a rich and rewarding introduction to their subjects. The books reviewed span an enormous range of scholarship, from popular biographies of Founding Fathers, to investigations of murders of prostitutes to discussions of frontier technology. Grouped thematically, the essays reveal a historian with an unrivaled breadth of knowledge and an admirable passion for his subject, and one who has contributed a continent-wide perspective to colonial history. As readers steep themselves in world-class scholarship, they also discover a writer who takes very seriously his role as reader.

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