Disputing Disaster : A Sextet on the Great War

A group portrait of six of the finest historians of the First World War

In <i>Disputing Disaster</i>, Perry Anderson picks out from the highly charged historiography on the First World War one leading historian from each of the major powers that survived the conflagration: Fritz Fischer, famous historian of German war guilt; Pierre Renouvin, a disabled serviceman and preeminent authority on the conflict in France; Luigi Albertini, the Italian newspaper tycoon who, unique among scholars of the Great War, played a part in pitching his country into it; Paul W. Schroeder, the American expert on the system of Europe - an interstate relations and its breakdown in 1914; Keith Wilson, the one radical deviant from a patriotic consensus about Britain’s role in the outbreak of the fighting; and, from Australia (summoned into the war as a dominion), Christopher Clark, acclaimed author of <i>The Sleepwalkers</i>.<br><br><i>Disputing Disaster</i> offers a compelling analysis of the major competing versions of the genesis of the Great War; fresh light on the political background of its leading historians; and a novel synthesis of the determining pressures that brought the conflict to pass.<br><br>Perry Anderson is emeritus in History at UCLA, and an editor at <i>New Left Review</i>. Recent work: <i>Different Speeds, Same Furies</i>, a comparative study of Anthony Powell and Marcel Proust.