To End All Wars: How the First World War Divided Britain - Softcover

Hochschild, Adam

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0330447440 ISBN 13: 9780330447447

Publisher: Pan Publishing, 2012

Synopsis

A brilliant new history of the First World War by the bestselling and prizewinning author of King Leopold's Ghost and Bury the Chains

About this title

Review:

'World War I remains the quintessential war -- unequalled in concentrated slaughter, patriotic fervor during the fighting, and bitter disillusion afterward, writes Hochschild. Many opposed it and historians mention this in passing, but Hochschild, winner of an L.A. Times Book Award for Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves, has written an original, engrossing account that gives the war's opponents (largely English) prominent place. These mostly admirable activists include some veteran social reformers like the formidable Pankhursts, who led violent prosuffrage demonstrations from 1898 until 1914, and two members of which enthusiastically supported the war while one, Sylvia, opposed it, causing a permanent, bitter split. Sylvia worked with, and was probably the lover of, Keir Hardie, a Scotsman who rose from poverty to found the British Labour party. Except for Bertrand Russell, famous opponents are scarce because most supported the war. Hochschild vividly evokes the jingoism of even such leading men of letters as Kipling, Conan Doyle, H.G. Wells, and John Galsworthy. By contrast, Hochschild paints equally vivid, painful portraits of now obscure civilians and soldiers who waged a bitter, often heroic, and, Hochschild admits, unsuccessful antiwar struggle.' --Publishers' Weekly

`We think of anti-war movements as a recent phenomenon, born amid the controversies of Vietnam and Iraq. But, as Hochschild, the author of terrific books on the Belgian Congo and the slave trade, points out in this lively narrative, the British peace movement during the First World War was one of the bravest and most outspoken in history ... fast-moving and entertaining' --Sunday Times

'...it is the day-to-day details about individual lives that makes this account stand out....what makes this such a good read is that, throughout, the focus is on private as much as public lives, and especially on how war sowed deep, often irreconcilable divisions within families.' --BBC History Magazine

`charged and moving ... thoroughly researched, wide-ranging in its curiosities, and always compassionate and sympathetic'
--Guardian

From the Back Cover:

"This is the kind of investigatory history Hochschild pulls off like no one else . . . Hochschild is a master at chronicling how prevailing cultural opinion is formed and, less frequently, how it's challenged." Maureen Corrigan, NPR s Fresh Air
World War I was supposed to be the war to end all wars. Over four long years, nations around the globe were sucked into the tempest, and millions of men died on the battlefields. To this day, the war stands as one of history s most senseless spasms of carnage, defying rational explanation.
To End All Wars focuses on the long-ignored moral drama of the war s critics, alongside its generals and heroes. Many of these dissenters were thrown in jail for their opposition to the war, from a future Nobel Prize winner to an editor behind bars who distributed a clandestine newspaper on toilet paper. These critics were sometimes intimately connected to their enemy hawks: one of Britain s most prominent women pacifist campaigners had a brother who was commander in chief on the Western Front. Two well-known sisters split so bitterly over the war that they ended up publishing newspapers that attacked each other.
As Adam Hochschild brings the Great War to life as never before, he forces us to confront the big questions: Why did so many nations get so swept up in the violence? Why couldn t cooler heads prevail? And can we ever avoid repeating history?
"Hochschild brings fresh drama to the story and explores it in provocative ways . . . Exemplary in all respects." Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post
"Superb . . . Brilliantly written and reads like a novel . . . [Hochschild] gives us yet another absorbing chronicle of the redeeming power of protest." Minneapolis Star Tribune
ADAM HOCHSCHILD has won a reputation as a master of suspense and vivid character portrayal with King Leopold s Ghost, Bury the Chains, and other books. His skill at evoking individual struggles for justice amid the sweep of historic events has made him a finalist for the National Book Award and won him a host of other prizes.

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About this edition

• Publisher: Pan Publishing
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0330447440
• ISBN 13: 9780330447447
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 497