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Ferguson, Niall The Pity of War ISBN 13: 9780713992465

The Pity of War - Hardcover

 
9780713992465: The Pity of War
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More than any other event, the First World War made the twentieth century what it has been. Now, as the century draws to a close, eighty years after the Armistice of 11 November 1918, the time is right for a radical reassessment of the 'Great War'. In this boldly conceived book, aimed to appeal not only to students but also to the general reader, Niall Ferguson explodes many of the myths surrounding the war.

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Review:
If someone less distinguished than Niall Ferguson--a fellow and tutor in Modern History at Jesus College, Oxford--had written The Pity of Waryou could be forgiven for thinking that he was a man in search of a few cheap headlines by contradicting almost every accepted orthodoxy about World War I.

Ferguson argues that Britain was as much to blame for the start of the war as was German militarism, and that had Britain sacrificed Belgium to Germany, the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution would never have happened, Germany would have created a united European state, and Britain could have remained a superpower. He also contends that there was little enthusiasm for the war in Britain in 1914, but equally he claims that it was not prolonged by clever manipulation of the media. Instead, he purports that the reason men fought was because they enjoyed it. He also maintains that it wasn't the severity of the conditions imposed on Germany at Versailles in 1919 that led inexorably to World War II; rather it was the comparative leniency and the failure to collect reparations in full.

The Pity of War has no pretensions to offering the grand narrative of World War I. Instead it reads like a polemical tract; as such it is immensely readable, well-researched, and controversial. You may not end up agreeing with all of Ferguson's arguments, but that should not deter you from reading it. All of us need our deeply-held views challenged from time to time; if only to remind us why we've got them. --John Crace

Review:
The most challenging and provocative analysis of the First World War to date (Ian Kershaw)

Must take a permanent place at the top of the War's historiography. It is one of the very few books whose own scale matches that of the events it describes (Alan Clark Daily Telegraph)

Brilliant and stimulating ... radical, readable and convincing (The Times)

Possibly the most important book to appear in years both on the origins of the First World War ... Ferguson can confidently claim to have inherited A. J. P. Taylor's mantle (Paul Kennedy New York Review of Books)

At one massive stroke, Niall Ferguson has transformed the intellectual landscape (Economist)

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  • PublisherAllen Lane
  • Publication date1998
  • ISBN 10 0713992468
  • ISBN 13 9780713992465
  • BindingHardcover
  • Edition number1
  • Number of pages672
  • Rating

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ISBN 10:  ISBN 13:  9780465057115
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