Paris 1919 : six months that changed the world / Margaret MacMillan.

Peacemakers

First U.S. edition.

0375508260 (hardcover)
9780375508264 (hardcover)
9780375760525
0375760520

New York : Random House, [2002]

©2002

English

xxxi, 570 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm

9780375508264

D644 .M32 2002

15.50
NQ 1110
cci1icc

940.3/141

"Between January and July 1919, after "the war to end all wars," men and women from around the world converged on Paris to shape the peace. Center stage, for the first time in history, was an American president, Woodrow Wilson, who with his Fourteen Points seemed to promise to so many people the fulfillment of their dreams. Stern, intransigent, impatient when it came to security concerns and wildly idealistic in his dream of a League of Nations that would resolve all future conflict peacefully, Wilson is only one of the larger-than-life characters who fill the pages of this extraordinary book. David Lloyd George, the gregarious and wily British prime minister, brought Winston Churchill and John Maynard Keynes. Lawrence of Arabia joined the Arab delegation. Ho Chi Minh, a kitchen assistant at the Ritz, submitted a petition for an independent Vietnam. For six months, Paris was effectively the center of the world as the peacemakers carved up bankrupt empires and created new countries. This book brings to life the personalities, ideals, and prejudices of the men who shaped the settlement. They pushed Russia to the sidelines, alienated China, and dismissed the Arabs. They struggled with the problems of Kosovo, of the Kurds, and of a homeland for the Jews. The peacemakers, so it has been said, failed dismally; above all they failed to prevent another war. Margaret MacMillan argues that they have unfairly been made the scapegoats for the mistakes of those who came later. She refutes received ideas about the path from Versailles to World War II and debunks the widely accepted notion that reparations imposed on the Germans were in large part responsible for the Second World War"--Dust jacket flap.

"This work was originally published in Great Britain, in slightly different form, as Peacemakers, by John Murray (Publishers) Ltd. in 2001"--Title page verso.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 497-512) and index.

Winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize.
Winner of the PEN Hessell Tiltman Prize.
Winner of the Duff Cooper Prize.

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