Review
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Bold and ambitious . . . probably the best of the
current books about the First World War (Observer)
A remarkable new synthesis which draws on [Tooze's] two
particular areas of expertise, Eurasia and especially Germany,
and the global financial system revolving around London ... the
great strength of his book is that he invites us to look at
familiar events in unfamiliar ways ... Tooze's account brims with
contemporary resonances ... He is too good a historian, however,
to turn this into a simple argument for Keynesian deficit
financing ... the general public and policymakers alike will -
must! - turn to Adam Tooze for instruction (Brendan Simms )
It is particularly refreshing to read Adam Tooze's book ... it
confirms his stature as an analyst of hugely complex political
and economic issues ... Tooze's book covers a huge geographical
sweep ... he shows himself a formidably impressive chronicler of
a critical period of modern history, unafraid of bold judgements
(Max Hastings Sunday Times)
Adam Tooze's masterly book should be required reading for anyone
who wants to truly understand the significance of the war ...
Extensively researched and written with exemplary clarity, this
work is as monumentally ambitious as its subject ... his powers
of description and analysis range across all inhabited continents
... this is a valuable look at the ways in which the years after
the war came to define the rest of the 20th century (BBC History
Magazine)
Interesting, engaging and very readable ... Underpinning this
account is an impressive facility with numbers and an ability to
analyse them that is increasingly rare among historians nowadays
... he has also delivered, for the first time, ...a clear and
compelling rationale as to why it is actually worth going back
and looking at the era of the First World War at this particular
moment in time ... The Deluge reminds us, then, why we write
history and why we should read it (Literary Review)
Tooze made his name with The Wages of Destruction . . . His study
of the post-1918 era is equally impressive, explaining why the US
and its allies, having defeated Germany, were unable to stabilize
the world economy and build a collective security system in
Europe (Tony Barber Financial Times BOOKS OF THE YEAR)
From the Inside Flap
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In the depths of the Great War, with millions of dead
and no imaginable end to the conflict, societies around the world
began to buckle. As the cataclysmic battles continued, a new
global order was being born.
Adam Tooze's panoramic new book tells a radical, new story of the
struggle for global mastery from the battles of the Western Front
in 1916 to the Great Depression of the 1930s. The war shook the
foundations of political and economic order across Eurasia.
Empires that had lasted since the Middle Ages collapsed into
ruins. New nations sprang up. Strikes, street-fighting and
revolution convulsed much of the world. And beneath the surface
turmoil, the war set in motion a deeper and more lasting shift, a
transformation that continues to shape the present day: 1916 was
the year when world affairs began to revolve around the United
States.
America was both a uniquely powerful global force: a force that
was forward-looking, the focus of hope, money and ideas, and at
the same time elusive, unpredictable and in fundamental respects
unwilling to confront these unwished for responsibilities. Tooze
shows how the e of effectively the whole of civilization - the
British Empire, the future of peace in Europe, the survival of
the Weimar Republic, both the Russian and Chinese revolutions and
stability in the Pacific - now came to revolve around this new
power's fraught relationship with a shockingly changed world.
The Deluge is both a brilliantly illuminating exploration of the
past and an essential history for the present.