Author:Richard Holmes
For most British people, the First World War was the Western Front, the trench line stretching from the Swiss Frontier to the North Sea. It was there that the majority of nearly nine million British and Dominion soldiers who enlisted during the war served, and where most of the 947,000 who were killed met their deaths.
This detailed but accessible account covers everything from how the front was created and the experiences of the British Army in France, to the battle of Verdun and the last hundred days of the war. Holmes' concise and heartfelt narrative is illustrated with photographs, diagrams, maps and quotations that bring this inhuman four years of history to life.
In one of the best single-volume histories of the First World War available, Holmes skillfully clarifies the complexities of the Western Front, and highlights the political, military and human dilemmas of this, the most bitter and bloody of conflicts.
Top notch
—— IndependentA remarkable achievement
—— Daily MailAuthoritative, concise, wide-ranging and readable ... it is hard to see how Richard Holmes' The Western Front can be bettered
—— BBC History MagazineA story of willful blindness masquerading as secret intelligence worthy of Somerset Maugham or Graham Greene
—— New York TimesBob Drogin is an ace newspaper man, who raked through the muck of so-called intelligence that was used to justify America's invasion of Iraq -- and struck journalistic gold in this story of a con-man who told his CIA handlers exactly what they wanted to hear. If this twisted tale of deception and credulity could be read simply as a thrilling farce it would be pure delight -- but much more importantly, it is a history of our time
—— Philip Gourevitch, author of We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from RwandaBob Drogin is a brilliant reporter; in Curveball, he has produced a riveting and important investigation, full of startling and carefully documented detail, laying bare the anatomy of an intelligence failure and its contribution to a catastrophic war
—— Steve Coll, author of GHOST WARS: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin LadenBob Drogin accomplishes what only the best reporters can; he forces you to wonder how he could possibly know that! If you want to know how the CIA could have possibly been so wrong about Iraq, here is a big part of the answer. It is a case study in how even the most intelligent and capable people can, when determined enough, hear only what they wish to hear
—— Mark Bowden, author of Black Hawk Down and Guests of the Ayatollah: The Iran Hostage Crisis: The First Battle in America's War with Militant IslamA crucial study in the political manipulation of intelligence. Understanding how Curveball got us into Iraq will arm us for the next round of lies coming out of Washington
—— Robert Baer, author of See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism, and Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi CrudeCurveball is a true story, marvelously reported, about a descent into the nether world of deceit and duplicity, where the lies of a single man in an interrogation cell in Germany grew like a malign spore in the dark. When it emerged, on the lips of the President and the Secretary of State, it infected the course of world events.
—— Jonathan Harr, author of The Lost Painting and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for A Civil ActionHere we go again: the self-deception, the corruption of intelligence, and the abuse of authority, amid a full cast of the usual suspects in the White House and the Pentagon. It's a crucially important story, and it comes wonderfully alive in Curveball. It would be almost fun to read if the message wasn't so important-and so devastating to the integrity of the American processes.
—— Seymour M. Hershpacey, insightful and compelling
—— The ScotsmanMiranda Carter writes with lusty humour, has a fresh clarifying intelligence, and a sharp eye for telling details. This is traditional narrative history with a 21st-century zing. A real corker of a book
A highly original way of looking at the years that led up to 1914
—— Antonia Fraser , Sunday Telegraph Books of the YearCarter deftly interpolates history with psychobiography to provide a damning indictment of monarchy in all its forms
—— Will Self , New Statesmen Books of the YearA depiction of bloated power and outsize personalities in which Carter picks apart the strutting absurdity of the last emperors on the eve of catastrophe
—— Financial Times Books of the YearTakes what should have been a daunting subject and through sheer wit and narrative élan turns it into engaging drama. Carter has a notable gift for characterisation
—— Jonathan Coe , Guardian Books of the Year
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