Synopses & Reviews
The Penguin History of Europe series
reaches the twentieth century with acclaimed scholar Ian Kershaw’s
long-anticipated analysis of the pivotal years of World War I and World
War II.
The European catastrophe, the long continuous period
from 1914 to 1949, was unprecedented in human history — an
extraordinarily dramatic, often traumatic, and endlessly fascinating
period of upheaval and transformation. This new volume in the Penguin
History of Europe series offers comprehensive coverage of this
tumultuous era. Beginning with the outbreak of World War I through the
rise of Hitler and the aftermath of the Second World War, award-winning
British historian Ian Kershaw combines his characteristic original
scholarship and gripping prose as he profiles the key decision makers
and the violent shocks of war as they affected the entire European
continent and radically altered the course of European history. Kershaw
identifies four major causes for this catastrophe: an explosion of
ethnic-racist nationalism, bitter and irreconcilable demands for
territorial revisionism, acute class conflict given concrete focus
through the Bolshevik Revolution, and a protracted crisis of capitalism.
Incisive, brilliantly written, and filled with penetrating insights, To Hell and Back offers an indispensable study of a period in European history whose effects are still being felt today.
About the Author
Ian Kershaw is the author of Fateful Choices; Making Friends with Hitler, which won the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography; and the definitive two-volume biography of Hitler, Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris and Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis. The first volume was shortlisted for the Whitbread Biography Award and the Samuel Johnson Prize for Nonfiction, and the second volume won the Wolfson Literary Award for History and the inaugural British Academy Prize.