Astonishing in its scope and erudition, this is the magnum opus that Niall Ferguson's numerous acclaimed works have been leading up to. In it, he grapples with perhaps the most challenging questions of modern history: Why was the twentieth century history's bloodiest by far? Why did unprecedented material progress go hand in hand with total war and genocide? His quest for new answers takes him from the walls of Nanjing to the bloody beaches of Normandy, from the economics of ethnic cleansing to the politics of imperial decline and fall. The result, as brilliantly written as it is vital, is a great historian's masterwork.
The War of the World
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Why, if life was improving so rapidly for so many people at the dawn of the 20th century, were the next hundred years full of brutal conflict? Ferguson (Colossus) has a relatively simple answer: ethnic unrest is prone to break out during periods of economic volatility—booms as well as busts. When they take place in or near areas of imperial decline or transition, the unrest is more likely to escalate into full-scale conflict. This compelling theory is applicable to the Armenian genocide in Turkey, the slaughter of the Tutsis in Rwanda or the "ethnic cleansing" perpetrated against Bosnians, but the overwhelming majority of Ferguson's analysis is devoted to the two world wars and the fate of the Jews in Germany and eastern Europe. His richly informed analysis overturns many basic assumptions. For example, he argues that England's appeasement of Hitler in 1938 didn't lead to WWII, but was a misinformed response to a war that had started as early as 1935. But with Ferguson's claims about "the descent of the West" and the smaller wars in the latter half of the century tucked away into a comparatively brief epilogue, his thoughtful study falls short of its epic promise. (Sept. 25)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From The New Yorker
Ferguson's eight-hundred-page reevaluation of the Second World War presents itself as a grand theory about ethnic conflict, the end of empire, and the postwar triumph of the East. The exact contours of the theory, however, remain unclear. Ferguson argues that the central story of the twentieth century is "the descent of the West," but he never really clarifies what "the West" means - Russia sometimes qualifies, sometimes not, depending upon what point Ferguson is trying to make. Ferguson is a skilled storyteller, and he offers many striking reflections on the bloodiest years of the past century, including a compelling analysis of appeasement. Unfortunately, the book as a whole is marred by sweeping judgments and jarring contradictions. A number of odd moves - such as the grouping of Hoovervilles with Soviet labor and German concentration camps - point up another conspicuous shortcoming: Ferguson's failure to make sense of America's power.
Copyright © 2006 Click here to subscribe to The New Yorker --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright © 2006 Click here to subscribe to The New Yorker --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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More About the Author
Niall Ferguson is one of our most renowned historians. He is the bestselling author of numerous books, including The War of the World, Colossus, and Empire.
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
70 of 75 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
In both relative and absolute terms, the bodycount of the last century was the highest in recorded history. There were 16 conflicts that left more than a million dead, another 6 that claimed from a half million to a million lives, and 14 more that claimed from a quarter to a half million lives; all told, about 167 to 188 million people lost their lives as a result of armed conflict. Harvard historian Niall Fergusson has written a monumental tour-de-force attempting to answer the question: why?
Being Niall Ferguson, author of "Empire" and "Colossus," the reasons are not the conventional ones. Large-scale killing has taken place in previous centuries, and the 20th century, blessed with material progress, should have been a peaceful one, yet the bloodshed was unprecedented.
Ferguson disagrees with the traditional explanation that the scale of killing was a result of more sophisticated military hardware. The killing fields of Rwanda and Cambodia showed that large-scale massacres could be carried out by primitive weapons.
Stalinism, Fascism, and Anti-Semitism have been cited as the sources of the centuries largests mass murders. Ferguson argues that although the nation-states that formed after the disintegration of empires embraced extreme ideologies, these nation-states were not inherently evil; in fact they carried out many positive and peaceful goals.
Ferguson, instead, identifies three elements - the three E's - that were responsible for much of the 20th century's armed conflicts: "ethnic disintegration, economic volitility, and empires in decline." One of the primary examples he uses to illustrate his thesis is the case of Central and Eastern Europe. Prior to World War I, four empires were on the brink of dissolution - the Hohenzollerns of Prussia, the Hapsburgs of Austro-Hungary, the Romanovs of Russia, and the Ottomans in Turkey. The co-existence of these multi-ethnic populations was always tenuous at best, the transformation from empire to nation-state was anything but smooth. The nation-states that emerged after the war - Turkey, Germany, and Russia had their own agendas to cope with the worldwide economic depression that followed the war. The other countries that were located in between from the Baltic to the Balkans experienced some of the bloodiest ethnic cleanings in history. And this was only a foreboding of what was to come.
What makes this "fatal formula" so pertinent today is that all of these elements exist in the Middle East today. According the Ferguson, as he elegantly argued in "Colossus," America is an empire, a liberal empire, but it is also an empire in denial. With economic instablity, which already existed before the invasion of Iraq; ethnic strife between Sunni and Shia; and America's wavering support for the young nation: everything seems to be heading toward full-scale civil war. Making matters worse, the conflict will inevitably spill over into Iran, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, all of whom have ethnic and religious interests in the outcome.
Ferguson's analysis seems to be convincing. The brutality that we are witnessing today in Iraq where Sunni and Shia treat each other as "inferior or malignant species" is remarkably reminiscent of some of the 20th century's worst nightmares. We can only hope that the bloodletting can be stopped and that a political solution can be found. Unfortunately, the ranks of the optimists are dwindling.
Being Niall Ferguson, author of "Empire" and "Colossus," the reasons are not the conventional ones. Large-scale killing has taken place in previous centuries, and the 20th century, blessed with material progress, should have been a peaceful one, yet the bloodshed was unprecedented.
Ferguson disagrees with the traditional explanation that the scale of killing was a result of more sophisticated military hardware. The killing fields of Rwanda and Cambodia showed that large-scale massacres could be carried out by primitive weapons.
Stalinism, Fascism, and Anti-Semitism have been cited as the sources of the centuries largests mass murders. Ferguson argues that although the nation-states that formed after the disintegration of empires embraced extreme ideologies, these nation-states were not inherently evil; in fact they carried out many positive and peaceful goals.
Ferguson, instead, identifies three elements - the three E's - that were responsible for much of the 20th century's armed conflicts: "ethnic disintegration, economic volitility, and empires in decline." One of the primary examples he uses to illustrate his thesis is the case of Central and Eastern Europe. Prior to World War I, four empires were on the brink of dissolution - the Hohenzollerns of Prussia, the Hapsburgs of Austro-Hungary, the Romanovs of Russia, and the Ottomans in Turkey. The co-existence of these multi-ethnic populations was always tenuous at best, the transformation from empire to nation-state was anything but smooth. The nation-states that emerged after the war - Turkey, Germany, and Russia had their own agendas to cope with the worldwide economic depression that followed the war. The other countries that were located in between from the Baltic to the Balkans experienced some of the bloodiest ethnic cleanings in history. And this was only a foreboding of what was to come.
What makes this "fatal formula" so pertinent today is that all of these elements exist in the Middle East today. According the Ferguson, as he elegantly argued in "Colossus," America is an empire, a liberal empire, but it is also an empire in denial. With economic instablity, which already existed before the invasion of Iraq; ethnic strife between Sunni and Shia; and America's wavering support for the young nation: everything seems to be heading toward full-scale civil war. Making matters worse, the conflict will inevitably spill over into Iran, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, all of whom have ethnic and religious interests in the outcome.
Ferguson's analysis seems to be convincing. The brutality that we are witnessing today in Iraq where Sunni and Shia treat each other as "inferior or malignant species" is remarkably reminiscent of some of the 20th century's worst nightmares. We can only hope that the bloodletting can be stopped and that a political solution can be found. Unfortunately, the ranks of the optimists are dwindling.
114 of 126 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Niall Ferguson's The War of the World has received a fair amount of "buzz." And, indeed, as one reads it, the scholarship, the knowledge of historical nuances, and the command of the sweep of the 20th century are all readily apparent. However, in the end, the book is somewhat unsatisfying.
The book begins with an interesting notion, namely that life was rapidly improving as the twentieth century began. However, the puzzle addressed by Ferguson follows from that: why did the rest of the century become so bloody? The First and Second World Wars were ghastly events in terms of the butchery of human life. And, looking at the subtitle to the book, one result was "the descent of the West."
What factors shaped the currents of this time period? He suggests three major factors: ethnic conflict, economic turbulence, and the decline of empires. The first two are easily understood. However, he also notes the disintegration/decline of the old empires, such as the British Empire.
What next? He suggests that the West is slowly being challenged by rising powers such as China. He also notes that the West, because of slow population growth, is coming increasingly to depend upon foreign labor, including those from the world of Islam (the Near East, as he terms it). Thus, his sense is that the West is facing challenges as we have entered the 21st century.
Obviously, this is an ambitious volume. It is worth reading to get a global, overarching perspective on the 20th century. However, in the end, it is not fully satisfying. The thesis is never crisply stated, the book tends to meander, and the final chapter does not really pull things together as well as it could. In short, the whole is somewhat less than the sum of its parts.
The book begins with an interesting notion, namely that life was rapidly improving as the twentieth century began. However, the puzzle addressed by Ferguson follows from that: why did the rest of the century become so bloody? The First and Second World Wars were ghastly events in terms of the butchery of human life. And, looking at the subtitle to the book, one result was "the descent of the West."
What factors shaped the currents of this time period? He suggests three major factors: ethnic conflict, economic turbulence, and the decline of empires. The first two are easily understood. However, he also notes the disintegration/decline of the old empires, such as the British Empire.
What next? He suggests that the West is slowly being challenged by rising powers such as China. He also notes that the West, because of slow population growth, is coming increasingly to depend upon foreign labor, including those from the world of Islam (the Near East, as he terms it). Thus, his sense is that the West is facing challenges as we have entered the 21st century.
Obviously, this is an ambitious volume. It is worth reading to get a global, overarching perspective on the 20th century. However, in the end, it is not fully satisfying. The thesis is never crisply stated, the book tends to meander, and the final chapter does not really pull things together as well as it could. In short, the whole is somewhat less than the sum of its parts.
186 of 214 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Are we at the edge of the end of Western domination of the world?
October 3, 2006
Format:Hardcover
Niall Ferguson is a remarkably inventive and productive historian, who in the last decade has produced a number of major works including a largely favorable analysis of the British Empire, and one of the reluctant empire of the twentieth century, the American Colossus. Now in his latest book, an expanded version of a British Channel Four Television series, he surveys the history of the twentieth century, which he claims to be the bloodiest century in modern history. This century had `the greatest man- made catastrophe of all time' the Second World War. His thesis is that one major reason for the disasters of the century is the decline of the great multinational Empires which existed before the First World War- and the conflict brought about through `the emergence of new empire- states in Turkey, Russia, Japan and Germany.'
In explaining the violence of this most violent of centuries he also invokes two other major factors. The first is the ethnic conflict in which advanced processes of assimilation (as with the Jews in Germany) broke down. The second is the `economic volatility, the frequency and amplitude of changes in the rate of economic growth, prices, interest rates and employment" which bring with them intense social stresses and strain.
These theoretical elements outlined clearly in the first chapter of the book serve as basis for his panoramic survey of the century's great disasters. But as his masterly narrative of international diplomacy and military history unfolds the theoretical elements somehow fade before the careful massing of evidence, the detailed analysis of what happened in Central and Eastern Europe, in China, Manchuria, Korea and Japan, in the vast stretches of the Russian Empire, in Cambodia and East Asia, in conflicts where incredible cruelties are done again and again by empires in demise suffering from ethnic conflict and radical economic change. .
The evidence for the Jewish reader is especially agonizing when it comes to his chronicling events of the Shoah, and too of some of the particularly horrific crimes committed against the Jews which occurred before and after it. These were perpetrated by a variety of Central and Eastern European people, Ukranians, Lithuanians, Croatians, Rumanians, Poles, Hungarians.
A vast human gallery are also victims of most horrible cruelties .Whether it is the slaughter of the Armenians by the Turks, or the Japanese wholesale rape of Chinese women,(The Rape of Nanking) , the slaughter of Tutsi by Hutus in Rwanda Ferguson provides a despairing picture of human cruelty and suffering..
In analyzing the perpetrators of the Holocaust he is especially instructive when examines not simply the ordinary `willing executioners' but the intellectual elite of the society then considered the most cultured in the world. Ferguson examines the Nazi appeal to `those with university degrees so vital to the smooth running of a modern state and civil society', and shows how Nazism provided a kind of political religion which came to replace declining traditional faiths. The new faith inspired by the magnetism of the Fuhrer captivated German intellectuals and deprived them of all sense of human decency.
Another theme of Ferguson is his belief that the wars of the twentieth century resulted in a shift in the world balance- of- power towards the East. As he understands it from 1500 to 1900 the West reigned supreme, but new centers of power have emerged which deprive it of its exclusivity.
Ferguson in some of his most recent journalism has addressed the question of which area of the world most likely to set off a new conflagration. He writes of the great Shiite and Sunnite divide. But alarmingly he also makes a parallel between the rise of a charismatic dictator in the thirties, and the rise of the Iranian Ahmadinejad today. He speculates about the rise of a nuclear Iran the West has tried to appease, and speculates about it compelling a nuclear exchange with Israel which brings about the twilight of the West...
Clearly Ferguson would like Western leaders to take responsibility now and by responsible action avert the new Disasters which may already be at our gate.
In explaining the violence of this most violent of centuries he also invokes two other major factors. The first is the ethnic conflict in which advanced processes of assimilation (as with the Jews in Germany) broke down. The second is the `economic volatility, the frequency and amplitude of changes in the rate of economic growth, prices, interest rates and employment" which bring with them intense social stresses and strain.
These theoretical elements outlined clearly in the first chapter of the book serve as basis for his panoramic survey of the century's great disasters. But as his masterly narrative of international diplomacy and military history unfolds the theoretical elements somehow fade before the careful massing of evidence, the detailed analysis of what happened in Central and Eastern Europe, in China, Manchuria, Korea and Japan, in the vast stretches of the Russian Empire, in Cambodia and East Asia, in conflicts where incredible cruelties are done again and again by empires in demise suffering from ethnic conflict and radical economic change. .
The evidence for the Jewish reader is especially agonizing when it comes to his chronicling events of the Shoah, and too of some of the particularly horrific crimes committed against the Jews which occurred before and after it. These were perpetrated by a variety of Central and Eastern European people, Ukranians, Lithuanians, Croatians, Rumanians, Poles, Hungarians.
A vast human gallery are also victims of most horrible cruelties .Whether it is the slaughter of the Armenians by the Turks, or the Japanese wholesale rape of Chinese women,(The Rape of Nanking) , the slaughter of Tutsi by Hutus in Rwanda Ferguson provides a despairing picture of human cruelty and suffering..
In analyzing the perpetrators of the Holocaust he is especially instructive when examines not simply the ordinary `willing executioners' but the intellectual elite of the society then considered the most cultured in the world. Ferguson examines the Nazi appeal to `those with university degrees so vital to the smooth running of a modern state and civil society', and shows how Nazism provided a kind of political religion which came to replace declining traditional faiths. The new faith inspired by the magnetism of the Fuhrer captivated German intellectuals and deprived them of all sense of human decency.
Another theme of Ferguson is his belief that the wars of the twentieth century resulted in a shift in the world balance- of- power towards the East. As he understands it from 1500 to 1900 the West reigned supreme, but new centers of power have emerged which deprive it of its exclusivity.
Ferguson in some of his most recent journalism has addressed the question of which area of the world most likely to set off a new conflagration. He writes of the great Shiite and Sunnite divide. But alarmingly he also makes a parallel between the rise of a charismatic dictator in the thirties, and the rise of the Iranian Ahmadinejad today. He speculates about the rise of a nuclear Iran the West has tried to appease, and speculates about it compelling a nuclear exchange with Israel which brings about the twilight of the West...
Clearly Ferguson would like Western leaders to take responsibility now and by responsible action avert the new Disasters which may already be at our gate.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the best books I ever read
If I could give this book 6 stars I would. OK, maybe it's not perfect and there are a handful of times (the book has >600 pages) when Niall Ferguson is a bit all over the map with... Read more
Published 9 days ago by John Malkovich
4.0 out of 5 stars
Detailed
I am not much of a history buff and rarely read this type of material. The book was well researched and written. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Rodney Hinds
4.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting and informative
Ferguson's century long history of man's inhumanity to man is filled with information and insights that are useful for anyone, not just history buffs. Read more
Published 5 months ago by John Martin
5.0 out of 5 stars
Extraordinary!
This is a fantastic book - very educational and a pleasure to read. It is very concise with plenty of facts and statistics. This is a remarkable book that I highly recommend.
Published 6 months ago by locodave115
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent and gripping.
This book has proven to be a major resource for course material that I teach: U. S. and World History. Read more
Published 9 months ago by DonnaF
4.0 out of 5 stars
Sweping effort--but slightly unfocused
Don't let it be lost on you that Ferguson borrows his title from HG Wells. The very last paragraph of this book uses Wells to wrap up his thesis--"the selfish gene with a death... Read more
Published 11 months ago by Jason Zimmerman
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fall of Empire
The fall of Empires, says Ferguson in this impressively solid masterpiece, is generally more bloody than their rise. Read more
Published 12 months ago by ElliottCB
5.0 out of 5 stars
A painful but important book
I discovered Ferguson, a Scots historian now at Harvard, when a friend introduced me to his last book, "Civilization: The West and the Rest," which I previously recommended. Read more
Published 12 months ago by Robert A. Hall
5.0 out of 5 stars
The war ot the World
I was unaware of how world events and attitudes had shaped the course of both world wars. The holocaust I found beyond comprehension but the prevaling atitude of the 1900`s set the... Read more
Published 15 months ago by Ray
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great Work. Heavy on sordid details and with some major ommissions.
Professor Ferguson presents a detailed and well documented work. I had to prod myself a couple of times to endure all the little details about some small incidents of cleansing and... Read more
Published 16 months ago by I. S. M. Md
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