The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power is Daniel Yergin's history of the global petroleum industry from the 1850s through 1990. The Prize became a bestseller, helped by its release date in December 1990, four months after the invasion of Kuwait ordered by Saddam Hussein and one month before the U.S.-led coalition began the Gulf War to oust Iraqi troops from that country. The book eventually went on to win a Pulitzer Prize.

Biographer Lee gives us a new Edith Wharton--tough, startlingly modern, as brilliant and complex as her fiction. Born in 1862, Wharton escaped the suffocating fate of the well-born female, traveled adventurously in Europe and eventually settled in France. She developed a forceful literary professionalism and thrived in a luminous society that included Bernard Berenson, Aldous Huxley and most famously Henry James, who here emerges more as peer than as master. Wharton's life was fed by nonliterary enthusiasms as well: houses and gardens, relief efforts during the Great War, and the culture of the Old World, which she never tired of absorbing. Yet intimacy eluded her: unhappily married and childless, her one brush with passion came and went in midlife, an affair intimately recounted here. Lee interweaves Wharton's life with the evolution of her writing, the full scope of which shows her to be far more daring than her stereotype as lapidarian chronicler of the Gilded Age.--From publisher description.

National Bestseller * One of the year's most acclaimed works of nonfiction A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: New York Times, Washington Post, New Yorker, Chicago Tribune, Kirkus, New York Post, Fast Company From legendary historian Adam Hochschild, a "masterly" (New York Times) reassessment of the overlooked but startlingly resonant period between World War I and the Roaring Twenties, when the foundations of American democracy were threatened by war, pandemic, and violence fueled by battles over race, immigration, and the rights of labor The nation was on the brink. Mobs burned Black churches to the ground. Courts threw thousands of people into prison for opinions they voiced--in one notable case, only in private. Self-appointed vigilantes executed tens of thousands of citizens' arrests. Some seventy-five newspapers and magazines were banned from the mail and forced to close. When the government stepped in, it was often to fan the flames. This was America during and after the Great War: a brief but appalling era blighted by lynchings, censorship, and the sadistic, sometimes fatal abuse of conscientious objectors in military prisons--a time whose toxic currents of racism, nativism, red-baiting, and contempt for the rule of law then flowed directly through the intervening decades to poison our own. It was a tumultuous period defined by a diverse and colorful cast of characters, some of whom fueled the injustice while others fought against it: from the sphinxlike Woodrow Wilson, to the fiery antiwar advocates Kate Richards O'Hare and Emma Goldman, to labor champion Eugene Debs, to a little-known but ambitious bureaucrat named J. Edgar Hoover, and to an outspoken leftwing agitator--who was in fact Hoover's star undercover agent. It is a time that we have mostly forgotten about, until now. In American Midnight, award-winning historian Adam Hochschild brings alive the horrifying yet inspiring four years following the U.S. entry into the First World War, spotlighting forgotten repression while celebrating an unforgettable set of Americans who strove to fix their fractured country--and showing how their struggles still guide us today.

World War I stands as one of history's most senseless spasms of carnage, defying rational explanation. In his riveting narrative, Hochschild brings it to life as never before while focusing on the long-ignored moral drama of the war's critics, alongside its generals and heroes

Now more than ever, a clear historical understanding of the conflicts that have engulfed the world is essential. In The First World War, one of the most respected historians of his generation offers a brief but hugely readable narrative account of WWI, its causes and consequences, and the many historical controversies surrounding the origin and conduct of the war. Karl von Clausewitz wrote that war is a trinity composed of the policy of the government, the activities of the military, and the passions of the people. Michael Howard argues that "each of these must be taken into account if we are to understand both why the war happened and why it took the course it did." In nine brisk chapters, Howard lays out the historical situation in Europe in 1914, the dispositions of the major belligerents prior to the war, the causes of war, the major campaigns, the entrance of the United States, the crisis, victory, and settlement of the war. Along the way, he offers compelling insights into the political motivations, military actions, and the "passions of the people" that contributed most strongly to the outcome of the war. There is no other short history of WWI on the market today written by a historian of Michael Howard's stature. For anyone wishing to gain a quick but authoritative understanding of one of the most crucial events of the twentieth century, The First World War is the best place to begin.

"The untold story of the movement that came close to keeping the United States out of the First World War. This book is about the Americans who tried to stop their nation from fighting in one of history's most destructive wars and then were hounded by the government when they refused to back down. In the riveting War Against War, Michael Kazin brings us into the ranks of the largest, most diverse, and most sophisticated peace coalition up to that point in US history. They came from a variety of backgrounds: wealthy and middle and working class, urban and rural, white and black, Christian and Jewish and atheist. They mounted street demonstrations and popular exhibitions, attracted prominent leaders from the labor and suffrage movements, ran peace candidates for local and federal office, and founded new organizations that endured beyond the cause. For almost three years, they helped prevent Congress from authorizing a massive increase in the size of the US army--a step advocated by ex-president Theodore Roosevelt. Soon after the end of the Great War, most Americans believed it had not been worth fighting. And when its bitter legacy led to the next world war, the warnings of these peace activists turned into a tragic prophecy--and the beginning of a surveillance state that still endures today. War Against War is a dramatic account of a major turning point in the history of the United States and the world"--

A landmark history of the war that firmly places the First World War in the context of imperialism and gives due weight to the role of non-Europeans in the conflict.

Reflects on the interrelationship between war, genocide, and identity in the 20th century. Contends that World War I provided a pattern for the industrial killing that reached its apex in the Nazi Holocaust. Comparing France and Germany, both of which looked for an "elusive enemy" to help them cope with the trauma of World War I, notes that Germany found it in the Jews. This perception allowed the Germans to see themselves as victims and their actions against the Jews as self-defense. The search for "elusive enemies" (to blame for perpetrating the genocide) and "elusive victims" (e.g. the French or German people) continued after the war. Compares the French, German, and Jewish postwar discourses of the Holocaust. Presenting themselves as the main victims of Nazism, the French and Germans have tended to neglect Jews as the main victims. Criticizes writings by Hannah Arendt, Ka-Tzetnik, and some other postwar writers on the Holocaust and its roots.

Edith Cavell was born on 4th December 1865, daughter of the vicar of Swardeston in Norfolk, and shot in Brussels on 12th October 1915 by the Gestapo for sheltering British and French soldiers and helping them escape over the Belgian border.

In How Few Remain, Harry Turtledove set the stage for his alternate history of World War I. Now, with The Great War: American Front, he carries this epic into the early twentieth century in a re-imagining of the fateful war that hurtled humanity into the modern age. Envision a divided America - one camp led by Theodore Roosevelt, the other by Woodrow Wilson - in the most explosive conflict humankind has seen, where global war is waged with sophisticated weaponry on American soil for the first time in history. When the Great War engulfed Europe in 1914, the United States and the Confederate States of America, bitter enemies for five decades, entered the fray on opposite sides: the United States aligned with the newly strong Germany, while the Confederacy joined forces with their allies, Britain and France. But it soon became clear to both sides that this fight would be different - that war itself would never be the same again. As President Theodore Roosevelt rallied the diverse ethnic groups of the northern states - Irish and Italians, Mormons and Jews - Confederate President Woodrow Wilson struggled to hold together a nation still beset by ignorance, prejudice, and class divisions. And as the war raged on, southern blacks, oppressed for generations, found themselves fatefully drawn toward a climactic confrontation.

The notion of battles as the irreducible building blocks of war demands a single verdict of each campaign--victory, defeat, stalemate. But this kind of accounting leaves no room to record the nuances and twists of actual conflict. In Somme: Into the Breach, the noted military historian Hugh Sebag-Montefiore shows that by turning our focus to stories of the front line--to acts of heroism and moments of both terror and triumph--we can counter, and even change, familiar narratives. Planned as a decisive strike but fought as a bloody battle of attrition, the Battle of the Somme claimed over a million dead or wounded in months of fighting that have long epitomized the tragedy and folly of World War I. Yet by focusing on the first-hand experiences and personal stories of both Allied and enemy soldiers, Hugh Sebag-Montefiore defies the customary framing of incompetent generals and senseless slaughter. In its place, eyewitness accounts relive scenes of extraordinary courage and sacrifice, as soldiers ordered "over the top" ventured into No Man's Land and enemy trenches, where they met a hail of machine-gun fire, thickets of barbed wire, and exploding shells. Rescuing from history the many forgotten heroes whose bravery has been overlooked, and giving voice to their bereaved relatives at home, Hugh Sebag-Montefiore reveals the Somme campaign in all its glory as well as its misery, helping us to realize that there are many meaningful ways to define a battle when seen through the eyes of those who lived it.--

"With every step, the Tomb Guards pay homage to America's fallen. Discover their story, and that of the unknown soldiers they honor, through resonant words and illustrations. Keeping vigil at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, in Arlington National Cemetery, are the sentinel guards, whose every step, every turn, honors and remembers America's fallen. They protect fellow soldiers who have paid the ultimate sacrifice, making sure they are never alone. To stand there--with absolute precision, in every type of weather, at every moment of the day, one in a line uninterrupted since midnight July 2, 1937--is the ultimate privilege and the most difficult post to earn in the army. Everything these men and women do is in service to the Unknowns. Their standard is perfection. Exactly how the unnamed men came to be entombed at Arlington, and exactly how their fellow soldiers have come to keep vigil over them, is a sobering and powerful tale ... that honors the soldiers who honor the fallen"--Provided by publisher

Joseph Roth is one of the least-known, yet easily the most accessible of the great twentieth-century writers. His deceptively light, massively concentrated fables of modern history evoke a world of catastrophic change, of disastrous belief and extreme loss. As the century ends, his stature is increasingly appreciated. And British readers, in particular, will find in his stories of a great empire's fall deep echoes of their own experience. ..Granta Books' major programme of republication of Roth's work continues with his last untranslated novel, Rebellion - the story of a Great War veteran, Andreas Pum, who loses a leg and gains a medal. He marries, plays a barrel-organ, and is happy. But when he is imprisoned after a fight life seems unbearably altered. Then a chance encounter with an old comrade who has made his fortune brings Pum to a world where he has a transfiguring experience of justice . . .

Ninety years ago, the League of Nations convened for the first time hoping to create a safeguard against destructive, world-wide war by settling disputes through diplomacy. This book looks at how the League was conceptualized and explores the multifaceted body that emerged. This new form for diplomacy was used in ensuing years to counter territorial ambitions and restrict armaments, as well as to discuss human rights and refugee issues. The League's failure to prevent World War II, however, would lead to its dissolution and the subsequent creation of the United Nations. As we face new forms of global crisis, this timely book asks if the UN's fate could be ascertained by reading the history of its predecessor.

Ruth Henig's fully revised and extended second edition of Versailles and After includes a new chapter on recent historiography of the subject and provides students with concise coverage of the following topics: * the terms of the Treaty of Versailles * the inadeqacies of the League of Nations as a supranational peacekeeping body * why hopes of long term stability gradually faded.

"Focusing on the former province of Galicia, this book tells the story of Europe's eastern borderlands, stretching from the Baltic to the Balkans, through the eyes of the diverse communities of migrants who settled there for centuries and were murdered or forcibly removed from the borderlands in the course of World War II and its aftermath. Omer Bartov explores the fates and hopes, dreams and disillusionment of the people who lived there, and, through the stories they told about themselves, reconstructs who they were, where they came from, and where they were heading. It was on the borderlands that the expanding great empires--German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and Ottoman--overlapped, clashed, and disintegrated. The civilization of these borderlands was a mix of multiple cultures, languages, ethnic groups, religions, and nations that similarly overlapped and clashed. The borderlands became the cradle of modernity. Looking back at it tells us where we came from." -- Provided by publisher.

Disabled veterans were the First World War's most conspicuous legacy. Nearly eight million men in Europe returned from the First World War permanently disabled by injury or disease. In The War Come Home, Deborah Cohen offers a comparative analysis of the very different ways in which two belligerent nations--Germany and Britain--cared for their disabled. At the heart of this book is an apparent paradox. Although postwar Germany provided its disabled veterans with generous benefits, they came to despise the state that favored them. Disabled men proved susceptible to the Nazi cause. By contrast, British ex-servicemen remained loyal subjects, though they received only meager material compensation. Cohen explores the meaning of this paradox by focusing on the interplay between state agencies and private philanthropies on one hand, and the evolving relationship between disabled men and the general public on the other. Written with verve and compassion, The War Come Home describes in affecting detail disabled veterans' lives and their treatment at the hands of government agencies and private charities in Britain and Germany. Cohen's study moves from the intimate confines of veterans' homes to the offices of high-level bureaucrats; she tells of veterans' protests, of disabled men's families, and of the well-heeled philanthropists who made a cause of the war's victims. This superbly researched book provides an important new perspective on the ways in which states and societies confront the consequences of industrialized warfare.

Appeals to readers interested in Marxism and communism, trade unions and labour history.[Bokinfo]