The Great War and the Making of the Modern World

Description

This new work demonstrates how the outcome of the First World War has formed the modern world we live in today. The First World War was the Great War for its leading participants. In revisiting the events of 1914-1918 a century on, Jeremy Black considers how we now look at the impact of the conflict across the globe and how it came to be World War I in our consciousness. For millions, both soldiers and civilians, the conflict proved fatal. The suffering and loss of the war provides much of its resonance and significance, but this book seeks to throw light beyond this, not least in asking how it ended in victory and defeat. Casting aside the conventional narrative, Jeremy Black returns to a vast range of original sources and investigates not only the key events of the war, but its consequences in restructuring the old order. As its significance has changed with time, and not only with the loss of first-hand testimony, Black considers the struggle not only in its historical context but through its memorialisation today.

Jeremy Black is Professor of History at the University of Exeter, UK, and a Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of America and the West at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, USA. His books include War: A Short History, The War of 1812 and The Great War and the Making of the Modern World (all published by Continuum).

'Jeremy Black makes a convincing case for the importance of this era.' -- The Catholic Herald Reviewed on Stephen Goddard's Historywire.com * Historywire.com * An excellent history of the First World War... Even though many general histories of the Great War have been published in recent years, this one is well worth adding to the shelves. -- The Bulletin of the Military History Society, Vol. 62, No. 246 [Black's] overview of the causes of the Great War, the year by year chapters from 1914 to 1918 on the events, the battle and the politics show a mastery of the subject, particularly the many slideshows and the politics so often overlooked in similar one-volume works on the subject. -- 'Stand-To', Western Front Association One of the book's greatest strengths is that it is a truly global history of the war, containing insight and analysis of all fronts and not falling into the traditional trap of focusing excessively on the western front. Moreover, Jeremy Black takes a holistic approach to the history of war and moves with evident ease through the worlds of strategy, tactics, logistics, politics, armaments, and industry, constantly reminding the reader that this was not only a world war but a total war. -- James L. Macleod, University of Evansville * The Historian, Spring 2013 *