The Great War: And the Shaping of the 20th Century

ANNOTATION

World War I left behind several longlasting legacies: the clash between Communism and capitalism; America's dominance as a world power; the rekindling of seething ethnic conflicts; and a desensitization still haunts us. Poignant firsthand accounts and detailed profiles bring to life the story of millions of people caught in the crucible of 20th-century violence. 8 3/4" x 11". Black-and-white photos.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The World War of 1914-1918, the Great War, was the first of the man-made disasters of the twentieth century. In many ways it was without precedent. Never had the battlefield been so vast, whether in the trenches, in the sky, or on and in the seas. Never had a war reached so deeply into the lives of people so far away from the battlefield. The shock waves generated by this cataclysmic event are felt to this day, as this dramatic narrative makes vividly clear. Here is presented a history of world war in a new way. The military flow of the conflict - from the invasion of Belgium in the summer of 1914 to the collapse of Germany in the autumn of 1918 - is followed throughout. But these epic events are rendered with fresh insights by the interweaving of the cultural history of the time - the hopes and dreams, the ideas and aspirations, the exhilaration and despair, both of those remote from power and of those who led them. This is a journey into the intense personal experiences of people trying to make sense of war on a scale the world had never seen. Like the acclaimed television series that it accompanies, The Great War pays special attention to the troubling aftermath of the war: the emergence of new nations amid old and festering problems; how the victims and survivors dealt with loss and disfigurement, guilt and hatred; and the terrible legacy of brutality that has marked so much of the twentieth century.

SYNOPSIS

World War I left behind several longlasting legacies: the clash between Communism and capitalism; America's dominance as a world power; the rekindling of seething ethnic conflicts; and a desensitization still haunts us. Poignant firsthand accounts and detailed profiles bring to life the story of millions of people caught in the crucible of 20th-century violence. 8 3/4" x 11". Black-and-white photos.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Though a companion to a PBS documentary, this powerful volume offers far more than a montage of sound bites. Winter, a Cambridge historian and among the best active scholars of the subject, here writing with Blaine, the show's executive producer, interprets WWI as a cultural phenomenon that shifted boundaries between public and private spheres, blurred distinctions between military and civilian and established new paradigms for issues of race, gender, class and empire. The text makes these points by telling the war's story from the perspective of its participants at all levels, whenever possible in their own words. This personalization is no less effective for reflecting the demands of TV viewers for instant empathy. The 300 illustrations and seven maps here brilliantly complement the prose. No one seeing the photo of a horse carcass blown into a tree will ever again question either the war's contributions to surrealism or its challenge to rationality. And no one can regard the photo of "the man with a broken face" without realizing the matter-of-fact obscenity of all war. There are some errors of fact: German reserve units in 1914 were not, for example, concentrated in Lorraine; the British army had no Duke of York's Light Infantry in its order of battle. And some judgments are too neat: generals and statesmen weren't quite the blinkered blockheads depicted in this populist account. Nevertheless, this book stands independently of its TV counterpart as a learned and literate introduction to the event that defined a century. (Nov.)

Library Journal

Winter, a Cambridge historian, and Baggett, of KCBT-TV and the executive producer of the series, have coauthored a tremendously valuable companion book to the eight-hour PBS documentary of the same name to be aired in November 1996. Their work is rich in photographs, illustrations, and personalized accounts of the total inhumanity of trench warfare. The authors aim to show how World War I shaped the politics and culture of the 20th century, and their work is well explained and documented. Chapter 8's opening sentence is a good indicator of this: "The Great War, a leap into the modern age, unleashed an avalanche of the unmodern. This paradox has given the 20th century its characteristic form." The authors exhibit current historical thought about World War I but are not necessarily lineal in their approach. They describe the watershed of deeds and atrocities that provided the fodder for anti-Semitism and National Socialism, which in turn were catalysts of World War II. Strongly recommended for public, academic, and school libraries.Harry V. Willems, Southeast Kansas Lib. System, Iola

Kirkus Reviews

This companion volume to a PBS documentary series (to air in November) offers a cultural as well as a military portrait of the war that, the authors say, set the scene for events that would play out through the rest of the 20th century. So, in addition to battles, Cambridge historian Winter and series producer Baggett draw on diaries, letters, and other documents to paint a human- scale picture of the Great War. Photos portray the effects on the home front, from women working in a British airplane factory to French war orphans. More horrifying images include the bloodied coat of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination kindled the conflagration of war; a corpse-strewn field after the Battle of the Marne; and rows of Armenian corpses—evidence of the Turkish genocide. The accompanying text ranges from the concept of "total war," or war without restraint, to the hard-sell recruitment tactics employed in England as the war ground on. The images are of varying quality, and their reproduction is less than ideal, but collectively, they relate a terrible story whose aftermath remains with us eight decades later.