Norman Stone

world-war-one

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Journey into Fear

A Short History

World War Two

A History of the Cold War

The Atlantic and Its Enemies

The Eastern Front 1914-1917

A Short History of the World

World War One

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

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

One of the most original modern commentaries on the conflict ... this stimulating work can be read for pleasure in an afternoon, even if you are not particularly interested in World War One. That truly is the mark of a great history book

Exhilarating ... scintillating ... a heady cocktail

Entertaining and insightful ... one of the handful of living historians who can write with style and wit

A corker of a book ... brings more clarity to this complex, much-written about subject than some historians manage to do in books three or four times as long

The First World War was the overwhelming disaster from which everything else in the twentieth century stemmed. Fourteen million combatants died, a further twenty million were wounded, four empires were destroyed and even the victors&rsquo; empires were fatally damaged. The sheer complexity and scale of the war have encouraged historians to write books on a similar scale. But now Norman Stone, one of Britain&rsquo;s greatest historians, has achieved the almost impossible task of writing a terse, brilliantly written, opinionated and witty short history of the conflict. In only 140 pages he distils a lifetime of teaching, arguing and thinking into what will be one of the most talked about history books of years to come.

A dazzling, iconoclastic account of the terrible disaster of 1914 - 1918

'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

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.

World War One

A Short History

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