The Pity Of War

Ferguson, Niall

ISBN 10: 046505711X / ISBN 13: 9780465057115

Published by Basic Books, 1999

About this Item

First Edition, Third Printing. Not price-clipped ($30.00 price intact). Published by Basic Books, 1999. Octavo. Black over black boards stamped in silver. Book is very good; clean with no writing or names. Sharp corners and spine straight. Binding tight and pages crisp. Dust jacket is very good with light shelf wear and a small tear to spine. 563 pages. ISBN: 046505711X. 100% positive feedback. 30 day money back guarantee. NEXT DAY SHIPPING! Excellent customer service. Please email with any questions or if you would like a photo. All books packed carefully and ship with free delivery confirmation/tracking. All books come with free bookmarks. Ships from Southampton, New York.

Seller Inventory # 88462

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Pity Of War
• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication Date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 046505711X
• ISBN 13: 9780465057115
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Edition.
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
• Seller catalogs:
  • Military History

About this title

Synopsis

Studies the origins, financing, and outcome of World War I, and discusses public support, recruiting and retention of soldiers, treatment of prisoners, and related issues

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