The First World War - Hardcover

Strachan, Hew

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670032956 ISBN 13: 9780670032952

Publisher: Viking Adult, 2004

Synopsis

A hard-hitting, single-volume history of the "Great War" explores the causes and consequences of this global conflict, while tracing its continual reverberations throughout world history almost a century later. 60,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Authors

Hew Strachan is the Chichele Professor of the History of War and a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford University. The editor of The Oxford History of the First World War, he is writing a scholarly three-volume history of the First World War, the first volume of which was published last year to wide acclaim.

Hew Strachan is the Chichele Professor of the History of War and a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford University.

Reviews

Adult/High School–Strachan provides a comprehensive and gripping account of one of the most bloody and important wars in human history, bringing to readers a reality beyond its grim reputation. His greatest contribution is to restore the worldwide dimension to this conflict, for it was a war that was fought in Africa, the Middle East, the Pacific, and Eastern Europe, as well as in Western Europe. Furthermore, he shows the widespread effects of the war wherever it was fought, and he delineates the meaning the conflict had for its combatants. Some of his judgments might be debatable, but his accomplishment with this book is not. Well written and well illustrated with photographs, the volume lifts readers' eyes from the mud of Flanders.–Ted Westervelt, Library of Congress, Washington, DC
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

One of the leading historians of WWI offers this superior one-volume version of his massive projected three-volume work, the first volume of which, To Arms, clocked in at 1250-plus pages last year. Strachan strenuously avoids the traditional focus on the Western Front (and the British) and the conventional assumptions of generals' stupidity and soldiers' valor. The war as he sees it was a race among generals on all sides to create new weapons and tactics faster than their opponents, a race that the Triple Entente won. It was also a race among soldiers to fight with these new weapons and tactics instead of raw courage and numbers wherever possible. Yet Russia and the Dual Monarchy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire were totally unfit for a large modern war (one reason the czar and his empire fell in 1917) and were a source of fatal weakness to Germany's alliance even before Italy changed sides. The political background (including the rising consciousness of colonial nationalities conscripted for the war), social consequences and diplomatic finagling all face an equal amount of revision, leaving the book organized more thematically than chronologically. Readers already familiar with the sequence of events in strict order will benefit most. But all readers will eventually be gripped, and even the most seasoned ones will praise the insights and the original choice of illustrations. This is likely to be the most indispensable one-volume work on the subject since John Keegan's First World War, and will draw serious readers to the larger work.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

One merely has to read daily newspaper accounts of current conflicts in the Balkans or Middle East to confirm that the effects of World War I are still unfolding. Strachan, a history professor at Oxford University, is currently writing a scholarly three-volume history of the war. This work, geared for the general reader, utilizes a traditional narrative approach, but Strachan also provides interesting sidelights that focus on such topics as French treatment of deserters and the attitudes and efforts of African colonial troops. Strachan doesn't shy away from the question of "war guilt." He clearly regards the war as a pan-European blunder, but he also indicts Germany for efforts to upset the European states system that had endured since the Congress of Vienna in 1815. This is a concise, well-written account of the causes, course, and effects of a shattering conflict. Text complemented by maps and rarely seen photographs. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Viking Adult
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0670032956
• ISBN 13: 9780670032952
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384