Author:Niall Ferguson,Sean Barrett
The abridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Niall Ferguson's comprehensive The War of the World, read by Sean Barrett.
The world at the beginning of the 20th century seemed for most of its inhabitants stable and relatively benign. Globalizing, booming economies married to technological breakthroughs seemed to promise a better world for most people. Instead, the 20th century proved to be overwhelmingly the most violent, frightening and brutalized in history with fanatical, often genocidal warfare engulfing most societies between the outbreak of the First World War and the end of the Cold War. What went wrong? How did we do this to ourselves? The War of the World comes up with compelling, fascinating answers. It is Niall Ferguson's masterpiece.
Lucid and comprehensive-a vivid essay on wartime blunders and the post-war bluster that tried to hide them
—— Charles King , Times Literary SupplementExhaustively researched and scholarly-an exciting story and one that benefits from accounts written at the time by various soldiers and observers
—— Beryl Bainbridge , GuardianBetween these covers you will find a wholly unpretentious, terrifyingly honest breakdown of a war-exceptionally harrowing and impossible to put down
—— Mick Middles , Manchester Evening NewsPonting is both incisive and original in his account of what contemporaries called the "Russian War"
—— Michael Kerrigan , ScotsmanGutsy, humorous and a tiny bit snobby, she's a brilliant correspondent and chronicler of the times.
—— Sainsbury's MagazineA wonderful, insightful illustration of the activities, thoughts and feelings of a young woman during the turbulent time of war.
—— Family History MonthlyLively letters from Maureen, a Wren, to her RAF boyfriend kept their romance alive from 1941-45. Eric, who married her, was a lucky man.
—— Saga MagazineChildren are history's forgotten people; amidst the sound and fury of battle, as commanders decide the fate of empires, they are never seen. Yet as Nicholas Stargardt reveals in his heart-rending account of children's lives under the Nazis, to ignore them is to leave history half-written. This is an excellent book and it tells a terrible story... As Stargardt so eloquently reminds us, the tragedy is that children were part of the equation and suffered accordingly
—— Trevor Royle , Sunday Herald'Nicholas Stargardt evokes the individual voices of children under Nazi rule. In re-creating their wartime experiences, he has produced a challenging new historical interpretation of the Second World War
—— History Today