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The Making of the First World War Hardcover – January 8, 2013

by Ian F.W. Beckett (Author)
3.8 out of 5 stars 5 customer reviews
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Product Details

  • Hardcover: 280 pages
  • Publisher: Yale University Press; 1st edition (January 8, 2013)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0300162022
  • ISBN-13: 978-0300162028
  • Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 1 x 9.5 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #949,575 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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3.0 out of 5 starsInteresting theories for those with a good knowledge base of the Great War
By M.Jacobsen TOP 1000 REVIEWER on February 6, 2013
Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
As the centennial to WWI approaches and the 100-year-secrecy ban lifts on many documents, we can expect to see a LOT of new books on WWI. Beckett, who is a professor of history at University College, Northampton, UK, chose here to focus on a few events that he feels are often-overlooked pivotal moments in the war.

Those events Beckett feels are important include the flooding of the Yser in the fall of 1914, which Beckett asserts "effectively completed the continuous trench line of the Western Front" which would remain in place until the end of the war. Other key turning points include the death of Emperor Franz Joseph in 1916, the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II in 1917, Lloyd George's appointment as British Minister of Munitions in 1915 (this chapter was particularly interesting), among others.

It's important to note that Beckett assumes a relatively solid knowledge of WWI on the part of the reader. This is not a WWI primer. He does not waste pages explaining, for example, the overall action at the Battle of Gallipoli, yet without that knowledge, his assertion that Gallipoli forged the Australian national identity would make little sense.

Additionally, unless one has a detailed geographic knowledge of WWI battlefields, it helps immensely to have an atlas handy. (The West Point Military Atlas for the Great War is fantastic and, I believe, available for a reasonable price on Amazon.) Beckett's habit of citing obscure place names is quite confusing and I didn't make it through the first chapter before hunting down my atlas to make sense of any of it.

All in all, it's an interesting book with interesting theories for the WWI buffs out there. While I wouldn't consider it required reading on the subject, it does give the arm-chair historians out there something to think about.
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5.0 out of 5 starsTHE MAKING OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR
By Robert A. Lynn on February 23, 2013
Format: Hardcover
THE MAKING OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR
PROFESSOR IAN F.W. BECKETT
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2012
HARDCOVER, $28.50, 263 PAGES, PHOTOGRAPHS, ABBREVIATIONS, NOTES, INDEX

Europe in the summer of 1914 enjoyed a peaceful prodictivity so dependent on international co-operation, that a belief in the impossibility of a war seemed the most conventional of wisdoms. Europe was at the peak of human accomplishment-in industry, technology, and science. Also, new categories of manufacture had appeared to tempt buyers as well as new sources of cheaply extractable raw materials and the discovery of new deposits of precious minerals to expand credit to an increasing rising population.

The above created a revolution in transport (both by sea and rail) that added enormously to not just already existing regions of the world but also to areas that previously had never been touched. One would think that with this progress, that the major powers of Europe would have done everything possible to avoid war. Therefore, peace could've been preserved in 1914, had Berchtold, Sazanov, Bethmann-Hollweg, Poincare, British Foreign Secretary Grey, or one of the governments concerned, so sincerely wanted it if they were willing to sacrifice certain political ideas, traditions, and conceptions, which weren't their own personal ones, but those of their peoples and their times.

With the upcoming 100th Anniversary of the start of World War One in July, 2014, Professor Ian F.W. Beckett's THE MAKING OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR highlights twelve known and lesser known episodes of that cataclysmic conflict.Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsThe Dozen "Decisive Moments" that Shaped the Great War
By Albert A. Nofi on May 1, 2014
Format: Hardcover
A summary of the review on StrategyPage.Com:

'Prof. Beckett (University of Kent), who has written extensively on the First World War, discusses what he calls the dozen “decisive strategic or political moments” that shaped the war, some of which are “scarcely remembered.” The events are sometimes curious, or used in a symbolic way, but Beckett makes convincing arguments that underscore their importance. For example, his first case, the Belgian flooding of the Yser, which not only stopped the German advance in 1914, in the process creating an image of heroic resistance, and also preserving a remnant of their country under their control, and shaping the northern end of the Western Front for the balance of the war. The other events are Turkey’s entry into the war, the Gallipoli Campaign, the appointment of Lloyd George as Minister of Munitions, the film The Battle of the Somme, the death of Franz Joseph, German unrestricted submarine warfare, the fall of the Tsar, German air raids on London, the Balfour Declaration, Wilson’s Fourteen Points, and the German Lys Offensive. The Making of the First World War is an essential read for any serious student of the subject.'

For the full review, see StrategyPage.Com
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1.0 out of 5 starsthis is not history
By Stefan 1a1 on March 3, 2013
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
this is a propaganda booklet. A boring, one sited, chronological resume of the Great War. After reading Ferguson and Fromkin this is unberable. Don't get it and if it is given to you, sell it!
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5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars
By Tony on February 5, 2015
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
Good book
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