Liberation or Catastrophe: Soundings in the History of the 20th Century

After a brief discussion about the meaning of 'modern' history, Michael Howard presents a fascinating analysis of the history of the 20th Century- laying much emphasis on the USA, where the author has spent much time as a Professor at Yale. It was Michael Howard who brought the study of military history into the mainstream of historical research and his readers will expect this as an emphasis in his analysis. They will expect less about suffragettes, human rights and the role of women. Howard's concern is substantially with the role of the military in the developing story of the twentieth century. At the beginning of the twentieth 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 thirteen 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' 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.

Table of Contents:
Introduction; 1. The Enlightenment and its Enemies; 2. The Twentieth Century: Liberation or Catastrophe; 3 The Shifting Balance; Part 2 The German Wars; 4. The First World War reconsidered; 5. War and Peace in 1914; 6. War and the Making of Nations; 7. A Thirty Years War?; 8. A Missed Opportunity? Britain and the German Resistance; Part 3 The Cold War; 9. The Cold War; 10. Fifty Years of European Peace; 11. Cold War; Chill Peace; 12. NATO: An Unhappy but Successful Marriage; Part 4 Europe after the Cold War; 13. What is Europe?; 14. The European States-System; 15. Britain, France and the Making of Europe; Part 5 The War Against Terror; 16. War Against Terrorism; 17. September 11th and After; 18. Keeping Order in a Global Society.

About the Author :
Professor Sir Michael Howard was Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military and Naval History, and than at Oxford was the Regius Chair of Modern History. Among his most celebrated books are The Franco-Prussian War, War in European History, and The Invention of Peace.

Review :
"An emphatic commentary... Pleasingly direct, occasionally humourous" The First Post--Sanford Lakoff "Michael Howard writes about what history suggest with regard to the present and the future perhaps a reflection of time spent in combat in Italy against Germans, where he earned a Military Cross. In the 1950s Howard headed the Department of War Studies at King's College, London. He later co-founded the international Institute for Strategic Studies. This collection of Howard's lectures, developed between 1992 and 2003, will probably be his last book. In it he examines the larger framework of the 20th century, the German wars, the Cold War, Europe after the Cold War, and the War on Terrorism." Williamson Murray, Military History, March/April 2008 --Sanford Lakoff "This is an excellent book ... It is not easy to craft a good lecture that reads well on the page, or vice versa for that matter; it is a trick that Sir Michael brings off brilliantly." Alistair Irwin, The Spectator--Sanford Lakoff "The Spectator " 'Howard has published another magisterial book' The Naval Review "These essays are a wonderful reminder of just what a judicious, thoughtful, yet passively humane historial mind can tell us about the past and suggest to us about the future" Richard Overy, Literary Review, December 2007 'Howard has published another magisterial book'The Naval Review "[A]n impressive work...This collection is particularly strong on the World Wars, the Cold War and the War on Terror." Reviewed by Professor Jeremy Black, The Historical Association "Howard's is a deeply humane voice of wisdom, that of a humanist in an age of ideology, warning us that history is there to teach us by example. We ignore those examples at our peril." Reviewed by Christopher Coker in Times Literary Supplement, 2008