This award-winning cultural history reveals how the Great War changed humanity. This sweeping volume probes the origins, the impact, and the aftermath of World War I-from the premiere of Igor Stravinsky's ballet The Rite of Spring in 1913 to the death of Hitler in 1945. "The Great War," as Modris Eksteins writes, "was the psychological turning point . . . for modernism as a whole. The urge to create and the urge to destroy had changed places." In...

"In this vivid and masterful novel, a Flemish man reconstructs his grandfather's story--his life, loves, and art, all disrupted by the first World War--from the unflinching notebooks he left behind. Short Description War and Turpentine centers on two men distanced by time: a religious painter whose life is changed forever by World War One; and his grandson, a writer reckoning with his grandfather's story. The life of Urbain Martien--artist, soldier,...

"This is eminent historian Keith Jeffery's accomplishment in his magisterial '1916: a global history,' which focuses on a sequence of key events that unfolded around the world that year, and casts the Great War in an entirely new light"-- Dust jacket flap.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand Lives! presents an intellectually invigorating set of hypotheticals about the twentieth century--had we been smart enough to avoid World War I. The "Great War" claimed nearly 40 million lives and set the stage for World War II, the Holocaust, and the Cold War. More than one hundred years later, historians are beginning to recognize how unnecessary it was. In Archduke Franz Ferdinand Lives!, acclaimed political psychologist...

In 1919 England, as the euphoria of the Armistice fades, the nation counts the cost--millions dead or disabled, unemployment, strikes, and shortages--and attempt to build a new life. Teddy tries to recreate balance but then a trip to France to see the place where Ned fell has unforeseen consequences. Polly, grieving for Erich Kuppel, persuades her father to send her to New York, and despite Prohibition, the great city pulses with life and promises...

"A century after the outbreak of the First World War, a powerful explanation of why the war's legacy continues to shape our world. The war would make a celebrity out of Woodrow Wilson and would ratify the emergence of the US as the dominant force in the world economy"-- Provided by publisher.

"A richly illustrated commemoration of African Americans' roles in World War I highlighting how the wartime experience reshaped their lives and their communities after they returned home"-- Provided by publisher