Books like 1913 by Charles Emmerson

John Keegan’s authoritative history of the Great War traces the political failures, battlefield campaigns, and human cost that reshaped Europe and the world.

Paul Fussell examines the British experience on the Western Front, exploring how poets and memoirists shaped the cultural memory of World War I.

Historian Fergusson provides a revolutionary reinterpretation of the modern era that resolves its central paradox: why unprecedented progress coincided with unprecedented violence, and why the seeming triumph of the West bore the seeds of its undoing. From the conflicts that presaged the First World War to the aftershocks of the Cold War, the twentieth century was by far the bloodiest in all of human history. How can we explain the astonishing scale and intensity of its violence when, thanks to the advances of science and economics, most people were better off than ever before? Wherever one looked, the world in 1900 offered the happy prospect of ever-greater interconnection. Why, then, did global progress descend into internecine war and genocide? Drawing on a pioneering combination of history, economics, and evolutionary theory, Ferguson examines what he calls the age of hatred and sets out to explain what went wrong with modernity. --From publisher description.

"In the year 1800, the world suddenly found itself enmeshed in a web or mercantilism, war, and political intrigue, out of which a new world - our world - was struggling to be born. In this narrative historian Olivier Bernier provides us with a chronicle of that time, taking us on a journey around the world, providing a portrait of civilization at the dawn of the modern era.". "Bernier takes us inside the courts and parliaments of the major powers to listen in on the political discourse of the day. He leads us into the boudoirs and ballrooms of the rich, the cramped homes of the middle class, and the hovels of the poor to provide as intimate glimpse of the private lives of the first modern men and women. And he explores the seminal works of such masters as Beethoven, Goethe, David, and Hokusai to shed new light on the revolutionary trends that were taking shape in the arts, architecture, science, and philosophy." "The World in 1800 is an irresistible read for scholars and history buffs alike."--BOOK JACKET.