A Companion to World War I - (Wiley Blackwell Companions to World History) by John Horne (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A Companion to the First World War brings together an international team of distinguished historians who provide a series of original and thought-provoking essays on one of the most devastating events in modern history.

• Comprises 38 essays by leading scholars who analyze the current state of historical scholarship on the First World War
• Provides extensive coverage spanning the pre-war period, the military conflict, social, economic, political, and cultural developments, and the war's legacy
• Offers original perspectives on themes as diverse as strategy and tactics, war crimes, science and technology, and the arts
• Selected as a 2011 Outstanding Academic Title by CHOICE

From the Back Cover

A Companion to the First World War brings together a team of distinguished historians from 10 countries who contribute 38 substantial and thought-provoking chapters. The volume opens with a section on the state of the world before 1914, as it prepared for war without anticipating its true nature, and concludes with an examination of the conflict's military, diplomatic, and cultural legacies. In addition to covering the military history of the war and the individual states involved, contributors explore major themes such as war crimes, occupations, film, and gender.

Reflecting the latest historical research, this Companion enriches our understanding of the origins, nature, and impact of what remains one of the most devastating events in modern history.

Review Quotes

'The recipe for this volume's success is simple: take 30 or so of today's leading specialists, provide them with five broad categories in which to articulate their understanding of this conflict, insist that bibliography be a priority, and oversee the project with a scholar who is himself a respected, widely published authority. The book's 38 essays are grouped to treat five aspects of the struggle: origins, conduct, culture, a survey of the major individual states involved, and a finale that treats the peace conference and the war's aftermath....[A] superb one-stop portal into the period.' Choice

'Horne is to be congratulated for editing such a disparate group of essays into a cohesive whole'. Reviews in History

'This substantial and comprehensive work is an important contribution to the literature of a conflict central to the history of the modern world.' Reference Reviews

'In its scope, its detail and the quality of scholarship and writing, this book certainly fulfils the aims of the Blackwell Companions in presenting up-to-date research in a way that is accessible for both those studying the subject and those with a general interest . It will provide both with a useful resource, but is perhaps most effective as a resource used by students on courses dealing with the war or modern conflicts more broadly, providing potted histories of important aspects of the Great War across the globe. The attention given to fronts other than France and Flanders, and nations other than those that fought there, is both laudable and effective, a useful corrective the Euro-centrism that often affects English-language works on the Great War.' H-Soz-u-Kult

About the Author

John Horne is Professor of Modern European History at Trinity College, Dublin, and a member of the Research Centre at the Historial de la Grande Guerre, Péronne, France. He has published widely on the history of the Great War and of twentieth-century France, including Labour at War: France and Britain, 1914-1918 (ed., 1991), State, Society and Mobilization in Europe during the First World War (1997) and (with Alan Kramer), Germany Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial (2001), which has appeared in French and German.