Reviews for The war that ended peace : the road to 1914
Library Journal
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The question of the causes of the Great War has occupied historians for decades and promises to continue to intrigue. MacMillan (history, Univ. of Toronto), prize winner for Paris 1919, reviews the dynamic tensions in Europe prior to 1914. She reminds readers that the leaders of several European nations were dealing with such issues as fears of revolution at home and abroad while maneuvering for an advantage in the military sphere. The series of crises in the Balkans may have convinced political and military minds that any impending conflict would be of short duration. So, as MacMillan notes, the war was perceived as one that would have almost a cleansing effect on the European world. It turned out much differently. This book adds to a growing corpus exploring the war's roots, including Michael S. Neiberg's Dance of the Furies: Europe and the Outbreak of World War I, Frank C. Zagare's The Games of July: Explaining the Great War, and William Mulligan's The Origins of the First World War. MacMillan, who edited Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August and The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914 for the Library of America, writes in a style reminiscent of Tuchman. VERDICT This is a first-rate study, necessary for all World War I collections. Highly recommended.-Ed Goedeken, (EG) Iowa State Univ. Lib., Ames (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.
Anytime something turns 100, the commemorations and look-backs are sure to come rolling in. Take WWI, which celebrates the 100th anniversary of its declaration come summer of 2014. Nevertheless, that war, as with most wars, was a long chain of events that culminated in disaster. MacMillan's charting of those events comprises the bulk of this hefty text. She showcases how numerous royals, politicians, industrialists, colonial advocates, and military minds groped in the dark toward a showdown in which each nation's respective valor could be tested. The trouble with a book like this is that everything can be lent a veneer of inevitability, but history rarely works in such a linear manner. But MacMillan, famous for her scholarship on the peace concluding WWI, avoids this trap. She shows, again and again, that events could have run in any number of different directions. What resulted was a blunder on the part of plenty of blood-stained hands all around that was far from inevitable.--Orbesen, James Copyright 2010 Booklist
