The War of the Worlds (The Great Reads Editions) - Hardcover

H.G. Wells

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 140371438X ISBN 13: 9781403714381

Publisher: The Dalmation Press, 2005

Synopsis

Amazon.com Review: This is the granddaddy of all alien invasion stories, first published by H.G. Wells in 1898. The novel begins ominously, as the lone voice of a narrator tells readers that "No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's..." Things then progress from a series of seemingly mundane reports about odd atmospheric disturbances taking place on Mars to the arrival of Martians just outside of London. At first the Martians seem laughable, hardly able to move in Earth's comparatively heavy gravity even enough to raise themselves out of the pit created when their spaceship landed. But soon the Martians reveal their true nature as death machines 100-feet tall rise up from the pit and begin laying waste to the surrounding land. Wells quickly moves the story from the countryside to the evacuation of London itself and the loss of all hope as England's military suffers defeat after defeat. With horror his narrator describes how the Martians suck the blood from living humans for sustenance, and how it's clear that man is not being conquered so much a corralled. --Craig E. Engler

About this title

From the Publisher:

This book is a standard print version using a minimum of 10 point type in a 6 by 9 inch size and perfect bound - a paperback. As with all Quiet Vision print books, it use a high grade, acid free paper for long life.

From Booklist:

Ferguson's broadest work to date, this sprawling book folds the author's previous theories of empire and economics into an international history of twentieth-century violence. What went wrong with modernity, he asks, such that the Fifty Years War from 1904 to 1953 could be the bloodiest in history, and why did so much violence happen at particular times (such as the early 1940s) and particular places (such as eastern Europe)? To the common answers of ethnic conflict and economic volatility, Ferguson adds, perhaps unsurprisingly, the decline of empires. Consistent with Empire and Colossus, the problem was frequently that the empires of the twentieth century were too strong not to fight, but that they were too weak, as illustrated by an analysis of Britain's reluctance to intervene in Germany before 1939. Coupled with ubiquitous and persistent notions of racial superiority and the ill-fitting contours of nation-states, the borderlands of empires--Manchuria, Poland, the Balkans--became the killing fields of the twentieth century. In chronicling what he labels the "descent of the West," Ferguson challenges many scholars on many fronts, and deploys a broad spectrum of sources--from war novels to population data to his perennial attention to the bond markets. His ultimate conclusion--that the War of the World was the suicide of the West--is tinged with regret about what might have been, and perhaps even a Gibbon-esque anxiety about the coming Asian century. Brendan Driscoll
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About this edition

• Publisher: The Dalmation Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 140371438X
• ISBN 13: 9781403714381
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224