Liberation or Catastrophe?

"Michael Howard presents a fascinating analysis of the history of the twentieth century - laying great emphasis on the USA, where he has spent much time as a Professor at Yale." "Having devoted his life to the study of war and its impact on society, Howard is concerned substantially with the part played by war in the developing story of the twentieth century. At the beginning of the century, nostalgia for a lost past seems to have permeated the whole of European culture. This was the time of bucolic idylls of English musicians and poets of the Edwardian age, with revivals of folk music and yearning for blue remembered hills." "But 13 million men died in the First World War, and an entire world died with them. By then only rational, bureaucratic, effectively modernized states could fight such wars, with weapons designed to inflict maximum destruction." "The tone for a new century was set. For if the old order died with the First World War, something else far more powerful and sinister was born, the 'rough beast' of Yeats's apocalyptic poem, that was to dominates Europe for the rest of the century. In spite of the peace of 1945, it remains alive and flourishing in many parts of the world." "Such in part is the thesis of this powerfully argued book, but its sub-themes are skilfully interwoven and propounded."--BOOK JACKET.