The Fear and the Freedom: Why the Second World War Still Matters

Description

The bestselling author explores the impact of WW2 - highlighting the stories of twenty people from around the world. How does the experience and memory of the Second World War - one of the most catastrophic events in human history - affect our lives today? The years after 1945 were a time of both terror and wonder, whose impact still dominates our lives. Out of the ashes of war came the superpowers and nations of the modern world. From the new technologies delivered by scientists came the possibility of nuclear war. Politicians fantasized about overhauled societies, with some arguing for global government, others for independence, leading to the arguments about nationalism, immigration and globalisation that exist today. As well as analyzing the major changes and the myths that emerged, The Fear and the Freedom uses individual stories to examine the philosophical and psychological impact of the war, by showing how leaders and ordinary people coped with the post-war world and turned one of the greatest traumas in history into an opportunity for change. This is the definitive exploration of the aftermath of WWII - and the impact it still has.

Keith Lowe is widely recognized as a leading authority on the Second World War. He is the author of Inferno- The Devastation of Hamburg, 1943 and Savage Continent, which was a Sunday Times top ten bestseller and won the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize. He has spoken often on television and radio, both in Britain and the United States, and his books have been translated into 20 languages. He lives in north London with his wife and two children.

Richly-documented and wide-ranging . . . I wish schools would use books like this to introduce pupils to the complexity of the problems that face them -- Theodore Zeldin, author of 'The Hidden Pleasures of Life' and 'An Intimate History Of Humanity' Provocative, insightful and at times profoundly moving . . . I hope everyone - and our politicians especially - will read it and learn its vitally important lessons -- James Holland Insightful and panoramic . . . no myth goes unchallenged. Thoroughly compelling * Sunday Times * A masterpiece of historical inquiry: painstakingly researched, cleverly constructed and elegantly written. In surveying such a diverse panorama, Lowe displays a sensitivity to the human condition - how we got to where we are now - that is as unusual as it is welcome -- Saul David * Daily Telegraph * The Fear and The Freedom is a deft blend of historical research, moving interviews, and challenging psychological insights. Lowe writes with elegance and perception. A truly illuminating read -- Jonathan Dimbleby Keith Lowe has written an eloquent meditation on the aftermath and the long psychological tentacles of the Second World War. Beautifully written and profoundly perceptive, The Fear and the Freedom confirms Lowe as one of our finest historians -- Antony Beevor Magnificent...headed for much acclaim, and possibly big prizes. There is no doubting the size of Mr. Lowe's achievement. By virtue of its ambition; the variety of its content; its author's talent in giving us both "large" History and smaller and anecdotal tales; and an easy narrative resting on wide-ranging scholarship, "The Fear and the Freedom" can justly claim to be one of the best, most useful books on World War II to have emerged in the past decade. It belongs in everyone's library. -- Paul Kennedy * Wall Street Journal * Books about the causes and course of the Second World War continue to pour off the presses. Yet there are far fewer books about the world wide geopolitical, economic and personal effects of the most catastrophic event of the 20th century. So Keith Lowe's concise, lucid and highly readable book, which also includes the testimony of individual memories of the immediate years after the end of the War and their hopes of a cleansed new world of social justice and prosperity, is to be welcomed. In Lowe's opinion, the reconfiguration and realignment of nations that followed the War, led ultimately to Brexit, with Europe once again divided in a potentially dangerous and certainly disruptive way -- Juliet Gardiner This powerful book serves as a timely reminder of what our forefathers forged out of the ashes of the Second World War - an international order based on cooperation and interdependence together with a bold, fearless domestic agenda that set about creating a new society -- David Lammy Lowe's book is a compelling work of historical scholarship - but, more than that, it is an intimate portrait of how human beings carry on when their world has changed for ever -- John Gray * New Statesman * Intelligent and far-reaching . . . he blessedly forgoes the banal literalism of conventional history by considering the mythological, philosophical and psychological consequences of the war . . . Lowe brilliantly reveals how, when trapped between freedom and fear, people tether their emotional and intellectual states to world events * Financial Times * Overflowing with insights and ideas and steeped in curious and evocative detail . . . A very fine work of history -- Paul Addison * Literary Review * This is an important book, impossible to summarise, profound in its humanity, bold in its confrontation of sacred myths * The Herald * Ceaselessly insightful, this masterpiece of historical inquiry - the fruit of five years' labour - dissects the impact of the war on society, politics, urban planning and much else besides * Sunday Telegraph * Few historians could be better placed to investigate this subject than Keith Lowe . . . riveting * Evening Standard *