The Pity of War, Niall Ferguson
The Pity of War, Niall Ferguson
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The Pity of War
Explaining World War I

Author: Niall Ferguson

Narrator: Graeme Malcolm

Unabridged: 21 hr 38 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 06/23/2020

Synopsis

From a bestselling historian, a daringly revisionist history of World War I.“A rich and provocative book, evocative and heartbreaking.” — AtlanticThe Pity of War makes a simple and provocative argument: the human atrocity known as the Great War was entirely England’s fault. According to Niall Ferguson, England entered into war based on naive assumptions of German aims, thereby transforming a Continental conflict into a world war, which it then badly mishandled, necessitating American involvement. The war was not inevitable, Ferguson argues, but rather was the result of the mistaken decisions of individuals who would later claim to have been in the grip of huge impersonal forces. That the war was wicked, horrific, and inhuman is memorialized in part by the poetry of men like Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, but also by cold statistics. Indeed, more British soldiers were killed in the first day of the Battle of the Somme than Americans in the Vietnam War. And yet, as Ferguson writes, while the war itself was a disastrous folly, the great majority of men who fought it did so with little reluctance and with some enthusiasm. For anyone wanting to understand why wars are fought, why men are willing to fight them and why the world is as it is today, there is no sharper or more stimulating guide than Niall Ferguson’s The Pity of War.

About Niall Ferguson

Niall Ferguson is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University; the William Ziegler Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School; a senior research fellow of Jesus College, Oxford; and a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford. The bestselling author of Paper and Iron, The House of Rothschild, The Pity of War, The Cash Nexus, Empire, Colossus, and The War of the World, he is also a contributing editor of the Financial Times. Since 2003, he has written and presented three highly successful television documentary series for British television: Empire, American Colossus, and, most recently, The War of the World. He and his family divide their time between the United Kingdom and the United States.

Reviews

Goodreads review by William2 on February 10, 2016

Dr Ferguson seeks to overturn some long-held beliefs about WWI. He does this primarily through a masterful wielding of statistics. For example, the myth of war enthusiasm in Britain. He is able to show that this was something very short-lived, which occurred mostly at the beginning of the war. He is......more

Goodreads review by Anthony on February 03, 2023

Challenging the Preconceptions. This book is formidable, hard hitting and well argued as it looks to turn upside down everything you thought you knew about the First World War. For me it was exceptional, for others it is unconvincing. This is what history and research is about; this is why we read bo......more

Goodreads review by Ryan on December 01, 2018

World War I was the greatest mistake of modern time. Ferguson makes the case better than I could that the war was not inevitable, that without British intervention it would have been a relatively quick German victory, and that the results of a quick German victory would have been better for everyone......more

Goodreads review by Colleen on April 22, 2017

I am tempted to simply write good riddance and be done with it. Aside from the fact that the book had no real central theme (it was all over the place) and that the arguments set forth seem to have been decided upon before the research and the research molded around them, they don't make sense to me......more

Goodreads review by Grant on May 18, 2015

Ferguson argues that not only was the Great War piteous in that so many suffered and died, but was a pity in that it was unnecessary. Britain could have stayed out, as German war aims, initially, weren't anything the British couldn't live with. A continental war that humbled France and Russia might......more

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