World War One: A Short History

· Penguin UK
4.0
2 reviews
eBook
240
Pages
Eligible
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About this eBook

'Do we need another history of the First World War? The answer in the case of Norman Stone's short book is, yes - because of its opinionated freshness and the unusual, sharp facts that fly about like shrapnel' Literary Review

In 1914 a new kind of war, and a new kind of world, came about. Fourteen million combatants died, a further twenty million were wounded, four empires were destroyed and even the victors' empires were fatally damaged. The First World War marked a revolution in the technology of slaughter as trench warfare, artillery barrages, tanks and chemical warfare made their mark on the battlefield for the first time.

The sheer complexity and scale of the war have encouraged historians to write books on a similar scale. But in only 140 pages, Norman Stone distils a lifetime of teaching, arguing and thinking to reframe the overwhelming disaster whose aftershocks shaped the rest of the twentieth century.

'Bold, provocative and witty ... one of the outstanding historians of our age' Spectator

'Entertaining and insightful ... one of the handful of living historians who can write with style and wit' Tibor Fischer, Sunday Telegraph, Books of the Year

Ratings and reviews

4.0
2 reviews
Callum Wilson
09 April 2017
A great place to start with the first world war. Frustrating at times in it's speed but, simultaneously, that is also it's strength. I think the idea is to pick an area of the war you are most interested in and go check it out in more depth in another book. There were a few times I disagreed with Stone's conclusions, especially because he didn't leave room to justify himself.
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About the author

Norman Stone is one of Britain's most celebrated historians. For the period 1984-97 he was Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford. Professor Stone's publications include The Eastern Front 1914-1917 (Winner of the Wolfson Prize and published by Penguin) Hitler and Europe Transformed. He lives in Oxford and Istanbul.

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