The Pity of War: Explaining World War I

by NiallFerguson (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  2008

  $38.73

  In The Pity of War, Niall Ferguson makes a simple and provocative argument: that the human atrocity known as the Great War was entirely England's fault. Britain, according to Ferguson, entered into war based on naive assumptions of German aims--and England's entry into the war transformed a Continental conflict into a world war, which they then badly mishandled, necessitating American involvement. The war was not inevitable, Ferguson argues, but rather the result of the mistaken decisions of individuals who would later claim to have been in the grip of huge impersonal forces.That the war was wicked, horrific, inhuman,is memorialized in part by the poetry of men like Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, but also by cold statistics. More British soldiers were killed in the first day of the Battle of the Somme than Americans in the Vietnam War; indeed, the total British fatalities in that single battle--some 420,000--exceeds the entire American fatalities for both World Wars. And yet, as Ferguson writes, while the war itself was a disastrous folly, the great majority of men who fought it did so with enthusiasm. Ferguson vividly brings back to life this terrifying period, not through dry citation of chronological chapter and verse but through a series of brilliant chapters focusing on key ways in which we now view the First World War.For anyone wanting to understand why wars are fought, why men are willing to fight them, and why the world is as it is today, there is no sharper nor more stimulating guide than Niall Ferguson's The Pity of War.

• Used

  Hardcover
  1998

  $4.20

  More than any other event, World War I made the 20th century what it has been. Now as the 20th century draws to a close, 80 years after the armistice of 11 November 1918, the time is right for a radical reassessment of the Great War . In this book aimed at appeal to appeal not only to students but also to the general reader, Niall Ferguson explodes many of the myths surrounding the war.

• New

  paperback
  

  $18.13

  The First World War killed around eight million men and bled Europe dry. In this provocative book Niall Ferguson asks: was the sacrifice worth it? Was it all really an inevitable cataclysm and were the Germans a genuine threat? Was the war, as is often asserted, greeted with popular enthusiasm? Why did men keep on fighting when conditions were so wretched? Was there in fact a death wish abroad, driving soldiers to their own destruction? The war, he argues, was a disaster - but not for the reasons we think. Far worse than a tragedy, it was the greatest error of modern history. 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). 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).