Crucible: The Long End of the Great War and the Birth of a New World, 1917–1924 - Softcover

Emmerson, Charles

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1847923976 ISBN 13: 9781847923974

Publisher: Bodley Head, 2019

Synopsis

In Petrograd a fire is lit. The Tsar is packed off to the Urals. A rancorous Russian exile crosses war-torn Europe to make his triumphal entry into the capital. ‘Peace now!’ the crowds cry... German soldiers return from the war to quash a Communist rising in Berlin. A former field-runner trained by the army to give rousing speeches against the Bolshevik peril begins to rail against the Jews... A solar eclipse turns a former patent clerk from Switzerland into a celebrity, shaking the foundations of human understanding with his revolutionary theories of time and space... In Paris an American reporter in search of himself writes ever shorter sentences and discovers a new literary style...

Lenin and Hitler, Einstein and Hemingway, Sigmund Freud and André Breton, Emmaline Pankhurst and Mustafa Kemal – these are some of the protagonists in this dramatic panorama of a world in turmoil.

Emperors, kings and generals depart furtively on midnight trains and submarines. Women are given the vote. Artistic experiments flourish. The real becomes surreal. Marching tunes are syncopated into jazz. Civilisation is loosed from its pre-war moorings. People search for meaning in the wreckage. Even as the ink is drying on the armistice that ends the war in the west in 1918, fresh conflicts and upheavals erupt elsewhere. It takes six years for Europe to find uneasy peace.

Crucible is the collective diary of an era: filled with all-too-human tales of exuberant dreams, dark fears, grubby ambitions and the absurdities of chance. Encompassing both tragedy and humour, it brings immediacy and intimacy to a moment of deep historical transformation – with consequences which echo down to today.

About this title

Review:

"Ricochets the reader around the globe, providing a visceral sense of the power and pace of the whirlwind that in the wake the Great War birthed the world as we know it. The result is a kaleidoscopic portrait, brilliantly curated and elegantly executed, of a world on the cusp of modernity" (Wade Davis, author of Into the Silence)

"Brings this extraordinary time to life with great vividness by evoking key moments from the daily lives of a dazzling variety of people"

"Emmerson skilfully tells the story of this lingering end to the Great War and Europe’s subsequent and dramatic transformation" (History of War)

Book Description:

A brilliant work of narrative history with an international cast of characters that captures this definitive period after the close of the Great War.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bodley Head
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1847923976
• ISBN 13: 9781847923974
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 640