The Pity of War: Explaining World War I.

FERGUSON, Niall.

$125.00

Item Number: 145605

New York: Basic Books, 1999.

First edition, early printing “rich and provocative book, evocative and heartbreaking. Ferguson is a talented writer and a versatile scholar” (Atlantic). Octavo, original boards, illustrated. Boldly signed by Niall Ferguson on the title page. Fine in a fine dust jacket. Jacket design by David J. High. With a letter from the publisher laid in.

The Pity of War makes a simple and provocative argument: the human atrocity known as the Great War was entirely England's fault. According to Niall Ferguson, England entered into war based on naive assumptions of German aims, thereby transforming a Continental conflict into a world war, which it then badly mishandled, necessitating American involvement. The war was not inevitable, Ferguson argues, but rather was the result of the mistaken decisions of individuals who would later claim to have been in the grip of huge impersonal forces. "There is much to admire in The Pity of War...Niall Ferguson can confidently claim to have inherited [A.J.P.] Taylor's mantle" (New York Review of Books).