Saving the City

Saving the City
Author: Richard Roberts
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2013-11
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0199646546

A week before the outbreak of the First World War, an acute financial crisis surged over London: the Stock Exchange closed; money markets worldwide were paralysed. Drawing on diaries, letters, memoirs, press reports, and official archives, this book tells the extraordinary, and largely unknown, story of the first true global financial crisis.

British War Finance 1914-15 (Classic Reprint)

British War Finance 1914-15 (Classic Reprint)
Author: W. R. Lawson
Publisher:
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2015-07-10
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9781331076063

Excerpt from British War Finance 1914-15 Mankind have never had such a crowd of vital problems to solve - political, ethical, commercial, and financial - as the war of 1914 forced upon them. Neither have they ever had such a formidable array of fierce and sanguinary issues to face as arose out of that life and death struggle of the nations. Never before did so superhuman a conflict draw combatants from all over the globe. Never were factories, workshops, and peaceful homes so emptied of their inmates to provide victims for the deadliest weapons of war. In every walk of life, every branch of business, every industry, every market and every profession, its malign influence has been felt. The physical, material, and economic ruin it has caused is on a par with its horrible waste of human life. But there has been something also quite as wonderful in another way as these orgies of havoc and butchery. It is the grim resolution and ready resource with which the assailed nations met the onslaught of the Huns. The framework of British civilisation, instead of falling to pieces at the first shock of the German legions (as had been predicted by the Norman Angellites) seemed hardly to feel the blow. Its loosely-jointed sections closed up with a snap, and out of apparent confusion suddenly arose organised human forces which no mere military machine, however perfect in its way could long withstand. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

The Pity of War

The Pity of War
Author: Niall Ferguson
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 650
Release: 2008-08-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 078672529X

From a bestselling historian, a daringly revisionist history of World War I 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. That the war was wicked, horrific, and inhuman is memorialized in part by the poetry of men like Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, but also by cold statistics. Indeed, more British soldiers were killed in the first day of the Battle of the Somme than Americans in the Vietnam War. And yet, as Ferguson writes, while the war itself was a disastrous folly, the great majority of men who fought it did so with little reluctance and with some enthusiasm. For anyone wanting to understand why wars are fought, why men are willing to fight them and why the world is as it is today, there is no sharper or more stimulating guide than Niall Ferguson's The Pity of War.

The First World War

The First World War
Author: Michael Howard
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2007-01-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199205590

This Very Short Introduction provides a concise and insightful history of the Great War--from the state of Europe in 1914, to the role of the US, the collapse of Russia, and the eventual surrender of the Central Powers. Examining how and why the war was fought, as well as the historical controversies that still surround the war, Michael Howard also looks at how peace was ultimately made, and describes the potent legacy of resentment left to Germany.

Ring of Steel

Ring of Steel
Author: Alexander Watson
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 451
Release: 2014-10-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 0465056873

A prize-winning, magisterial history of World War I from the perspective of the defeated Central Powers For the Central Powers, the First World War started with high hopes for an easy victory. But those hopes soon deteriorated as Germany's attack on France failed, Austria-Hungary's armies suffered catastrophic losses, and Britain's ruthless blockade brought both nations to the brink of starvation. The Central powers were trapped in the Allies' ever-tightening Ring of Steel. In this compelling history, Alexander Watson retells the war from the perspective of its losers: not just the leaders in Berlin and Vienna, but the people of Central Europe. The war shattered their societies, destroyed their states, and imparted a poisonous legacy of bitterness and violence. A major reevaluation of the First World War, Ring of Steel is essential for anyone seeking to understand the last century of European history.

July 1914

July 1914
Author: Sean McMeekin
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 482
Release: 2014-04-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 0465038867

When a Serbian-backed assassin gunned down Archduke Franz Ferdinand in late June 1914, the world seemed unmoved. Even Ferdinand's own uncle, Franz Josef I, was notably ambivalent about the death of the Hapsburg heir, saying simply, "It is God's will." Certainly, there was nothing to suggest that the episode would lead to conflict -- much less a world war of such massive and horrific proportions that it would fundamentally reshape the course of human events. As acclaimed historian Sean McMeekin reveals in July 1914, World War I might have been avoided entirely had it not been for a small group of statesmen who, in the month after the assassination, plotted to use Ferdinand's murder as the trigger for a long-awaited showdown in Europe. The primary culprits, moreover, have long escaped blame. While most accounts of the war's outbreak place the bulk of responsibility on German and Austro-Hungarian militarism, McMeekin draws on surprising new evidence from archives across Europe to show that the worst offenders were actually to be found in Russia and France, whose belligerence and duplicity ensured that war was inevitable. Whether they plotted for war or rode the whirlwind nearly blind, each of the men involved -- from Austrian Foreign Minister Leopold von Berchtold and German Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Sazonov and French president Raymond Poincaré- sought to capitalize on the fallout from Ferdinand's murder, unwittingly leading Europe toward the greatest cataclysm it had ever seen. A revolutionary account of the genesis of World War I, July 1914 tells the gripping story of Europe's countdown to war from the bloody opening act on June 28th to Britain's final plunge on August 4th, showing how a single month -- and a handful of men -- changed the course of the twentieth century.

Lords of Finance

Lords of Finance
Author: Liaquat Ahamed
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 584
Release: 2009
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9781594201820

Argues that the stock market crash of 1929 and subsequent Depression occurred as a result of poor decisions on the part of four central bankers who jointly attempted to reconstruct international finance by reinstating the gold standard.

The War in the Air, 1914-1994

The War in the Air, 1914-1994
Author: Alan Stephens
Publisher:
Total Pages: 448
Release: 2001
Genre: History
ISBN:

This book contains the proceedings of a conference held by the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) in Canberra in 1994. Since its publication by the RAAF's Air Power Studies Center in that year, the book has become a widely used reference at universities, military academies, and other educational institutions around the world. The application of aerospace power has seen significant developments since 1994, most notably through American-led operations in Central Europe and continuing technological advances with weapons, uninhabited vehicles, space-based systems, and information systems. But notwithstanding those developments and the passing of six years, the value of this anthology of airpower in the twentieth century seems undiminished.

Europe's Last Summer

Europe's Last Summer
Author: David Fromkin
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2007-12-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 0307425789

When war broke out in Europe in 1914, it surprised a European population enjoying the most beautiful summer in memory. For nearly a century since, historians have debated the causes of the war. Some have cited the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand; others have concluded it was unavoidable. In Europe’s Last Summer, David Fromkin provides a different answer: hostilities were commenced deliberately. In a riveting re-creation of the run-up to war, Fromkin shows how German generals, seeing war as inevitable, manipulated events to precipitate a conflict waged on their own terms. Moving deftly between diplomats, generals, and rulers across Europe, he makes the complex diplomatic negotiations accessible and immediate. Examining the actions of individuals amid larger historical forces, this is a gripping historical narrative and a dramatic reassessment of a key moment in the twentieth-century.