In World War One: A Short History" Norman Stone provides a terse opinionated & wry short history of the First World War. In 1914 a new kind of war & a new kind of world came about. Fourteen million combatants died a further twenty million were wounded four empires were destroyed & even the victors' empires were fatally damaged. The First World War marked a revolution in the technology of slaughter as trench warfare artillery barrages tanks & chemical warfare made their mark on the battlefield for the first time. The sheer complexity & scale of the war have encouraged historians to write books on a similar scale. But in only 140 pages Norman Stone distils a lifetime of teaching arguing & thinking to reframe the overwhelming disaster whose aftershocks shaped the rest of the twentieth century. " Bold provocative & witty.. .one of the outstanding historians of our age". (" Spectator"). " Do we need another history of the First World War? The answer in the case of Norman Stone's short book is yes
- because of its opinionated freshness & the unusual sharp facts that fly about like shrapnel". (" Literary Review"). " Exhilarating.. .scintillating.. .a heady cocktail". (" Observer"). " Entertaining & insightful.. .one of the handful of living historians who can write with style & wit". (Tibor Fischer " Sunday Telegraph" Books of the Year). Norman Stone is one of Britain's most celebrated historians. He is the author of " The Eastern Front 1914-1917" " Hitler: An Introduction" " Europe Transformed" & " The Atlantic & its Enemies". He has taught at the universities of Cambridge Oxford & Bilkent where he is now Director of the Turkish-Russian Centre."