World War One

March 16, 2009
Stone is as unconventional as he is brilliant, and this provocative interpretation of the Great War combines impressive command of the literature with a telling eye for relevant facts and a sensitive ear for telling epigrams. Stone presents a Europe that in 1914 bestrode the world like the proverbial colossus. Four years later, the continent faced a spectrum of disasters: shattered economies, shattered societies, shattered lives and shattered illusions. Stone demonstrates the contingent nature of the war's outbreak and analyzes the continued failure to achieve decision on the Western Front until 1917. Stone specializes in Great War Russia, does a first-rate job of presenting the consequences of the collapse of four empires: Hapsburg, German, tsarist and Ottoman. He challenges current interpretations of the postwar treaties, presenting them as a list of failures. The attempt to integrate the world economy collapsed. The postwar expansion of colonial empires proved ephemeral. The League of Nations “declined into irrelevance.” Stone reserves his harshest criticism for the punitive terms imposed on a Germany convinced neither of its defeat nor the injustice of its cause. That, he asserts convincingly, laid the groundwork for a second, more terrible conflict. Photos, maps.

Starred review from May 1, 2009
The distinguished Stone (history, Bilken Univ., Ankara, Turkey; "The Eastern Front: 19141917") has compressed five years of war into admirably terse and effective prose. While full of bons mots, this volume is so compressed that it will probably not be accessible as a primer but could serve as a capstone for advanced study. It should be a part of everyone's World War I collection.EB

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2009
The First World War in fewer than 250 pages.

Stone (History/Bilkent Univ.; Europe Transformed, 1878-1919, 1984, etc.) tackles the daunting task of summarizing a four-year global conflict in a brief cohesive narrative. For the most part he succeeds, astutely weaving together events from the Eastern, Western and Middle Eastern fronts until their culmination at Brest-Litovsk and the Treaty of Versailles; his almost complete omission of the African front is the one major lapse. The author's prose is anecdotal and overly colloquial, but his command of the subject matter is impressive and his style accessible. Stone's German-centric approach to framing the war balances the interplay between the Eastern and Western fronts, which would prove central to Germany's eventual capitulation. Yet the author also abides by the conventional view of sole German responsibility that would wreak so much havoc during the negotiations at Versailles; he notes in the opening chapter that"Berlin was waiting for'the inevitable accident.'" While other powers struggled with internal nationalist movements throughout the war, most notably in the Russian, Hapsburg and Ottoman empires, Germany was a nation-state trying to move in the other direction and establish an empire. Stone juxtaposes the German high command's zeal against its failure to reconcile traditional cavalry-based warfare with new developments in technology. British and French military leaders made the same mistake, which proved to be one of the main factors in prolonging the dreaded stalemates and trench warfare that consumed so many lives. The author skims over some fascinating cultural elements, including the tremendous outpouring of trench literature and poetry, but he manages to address every military and political facet of the Great War in this welcome look at its manifestations beyond the Western Front.

A stimulating, easily digested introduction to the cataclysm that inaugurated the 20th century.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

May 1, 2009
For readers trepidatious about plowing through a weighty standard World War I history, there is the brief alternative Michael Howard offered in The First World War (2002) and now Stones pr'cis. Setting the table for 1914, Stone defines the lineups of the Entente and Central Powers, their underlying conflicts of interest, and their military preparations for a general European war. That done, he paraphrases the strategic thinking of German leadersbetter war now than wait for France and Russia to complete their armament programsthat induced them to risk an international explosion in 1914. From the illusions of rapid victory in one campaign, Stone elides to the hopeful successor strategies shattered by trench warfare, rendering his synopses of failed offensives East and West in vernacular language that conveys historys summary judgments of generals performances. A concise anticipator of his audiences implicit questions, such as what protracted a seemingly futile war, Stone, with distinctive wryness, introduces WWIs origin, conduct, and consequences with emphasis on essentials.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)