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940.4/Howard
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Location Call Number   Status
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Subjects
Published
Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press 2002.
Language
English
Main Author
Michael Eliot Howard, 1922- (-)
Item Description
Maps on lining papers.
Physical Description
154 p. : ill., maps ; 20 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN
9780192853622
  • List of Illustrations
  • Maps
  • 1.. Europe in 1914
  • 2.. The Coming of War
  • 3.. 1914: The Opening Campaigns
  • 4.. 1915: The War Continues
  • 5.. 1916: The War of Attrition
  • 6.. The United States Enters the War
  • 7.. 1917: The Year of Crisis
  • 8.. 1918: The Year of Decision
  • 9.. The Settlement
  • Appendices
  • I.. President Wilson's Fourteen Points
  • II.. Total War Casualties
  • Further Reading
  • Index
Review by Booklist Review

A distinguished British historian presents the central events of World War I for readers who are curious but unknowledgeable about the conflict. It is comparable in style to the author's recent The Invention of Peace (2001). Succinctly expressive, Howard's style concentrates narrative and interpretation within a few sentences, but a deep historical controversy often lurks behind his concision, such as who was responsible for igniting the war. For those readers who are incredulous that a global conflagration could erupt from an assassination, Howard summarizes how the alliance systems came about, the fears of the nations that contracted them, and the special resentments of a German monarch who embodied "archaic militarism, vaulting ambition, and neurotic insecurity." Just as perplexing, perhaps, is the continuance for four years of trench warfare; once again, Howard compactly explains the slight alterations in tactics that generals believed would achieve a breakthrough, but produced instead the bloodbaths that by 1917^-18 broke armies and entire regimes. Also touching on the war's course in Italy and Eastern Europe, Howard elegantly applies his erudition and judgment to this concise introduction. Gilbert Taylor

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A concise, credible, lucid account of the causes, battles, politics, and consequences of the Great War. Howard (Professor Emeritus, History/Yale and Oxford) compresses a mass of material, theory, and argument. His modest ambition, he states, is merely to introduce. But he does far more; he also engages and educates. First offering a snapshot of Europe in 1914, Howard then establishes the geopolitics and identifies the principal reasons each of the major powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, France, Russia, Britain) allowed the machinery of war to rumble into motion and then roar into sanguinary life. The author explains how the battlefield was transformed by the emerging technology of warfare: improved firepower, artillery with increasing range, poison gas, automobiles, airplanes, and submarines. All the combatants believed the war would be short; when the conflict slowed in the trenches and became a war of attrition, Howard analyzes how political forces on the home fronts sought to end it. He does not focus on the war's human cost, though occasionally he reminds us of the horror visited upon innocent civilians. Discussing refugees, he describes "the first trickle of that immense and miserable flood of uprooted humanity that was to characterize warfare for the rest of the century." The author deals skillfully with the late, reluctant entry of the US into the conflict, occasioned by German submarine attacks on passenger and merchant vessels in a last-gasp attempt to stop the Allies' supplies. As Howard notes, the Germans knew this would bring America into the war, but the High Command hoped the conflict would be over before that entry had much of an effect. They miscalculated: Americans flooded "over there," and their mere presence, the author argues, animated the Allies. His final pages deal with the Versailles Treaty, whose harsh conditions would arm Adolf Hitler with much political firepower. Demonstrates with clarity, craft, and precision that even in scholarship less can be more. (12 b&w photos; 7 maps)

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.