Dance of the Furies: Europe and the Outbreak of World War I - Rilegato

Neiberg, Michael S.

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0674049543 ISBN 13: 9780674049543

Casa editrice: Belknap Pr, 2011

Riassunto

The common explanation for the outbreak of World War I depicts Europe as a minefield of nationalism, needing only the slightest pressure to set off an explosion of passion that would rip the continent apart. But in a crucial reexamination of the outbreak of violence, Michael Neiberg shows that ordinary Europeans, unlike their political and military leaders, neither wanted nor expected war during the fateful summer of 1914. By training his eye on the ways that people outside the halls of power reacted to the rapid onset and escalation of the fighting, Neiberg dispels the notion that Europeans were rabid nationalists intent on mass slaughter. He reveals instead a complex set of allegiances that cut across national boundaries.

Neiberg marshals letters, diaries, and memoirs of ordinary citizens across Europe to show that the onset of war was experienced as a sudden, unexpected event. As they watched a minor diplomatic crisis erupt into a continental bloodbath, they expressed shock, revulsion, and fear. But when bargains between belligerent governments began to crumble under the weight of conflict, public disillusionment soon followed. Yet it was only after the fighting acquired its own horrible momentum that national hatreds emerged under the pressure of mutually escalating threats, wartime atrocities, and intense government propaganda.

Dance of the Furies gives voice to a generation who found themselves compelled to participate in a ghastly, protracted orgy of violence they never imagined would come to pass.

Su questo libro

Recensione:

"Powerful and original...Michael Neiberg's Dance of the Furies examines what has been a bitterly contentious subject ever since: how the war began." --Geoffrey Wheatcroft, New York Review of Books, 23 June 2011

"Neiberg's story is a sober and a chastening one, since it shows how wars take on a life of their own, in that the moral pollution they trigger lingers long after the diplomats have finished with peace treaties supposedly ending hostilities. [...] Michael Neiberg's fine book shows what a disaster that moment [the outbreak of war in 1914] was, a moment when the population of Europe was frogmarched into unnecessary war, and learned that the only way to win it was with hatred and violence of a depth and intensity the world had never seen before." --TLS, 10 August 2012

L'autore:

Michael S. Neiberg is Professor of History at the University of Southern Mississippi and Harold K. Johnson Visiting Professor at the US Army War College from 2010-2012.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Belknap Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0674049543
• ISBN 13: 9780674049543
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 292