Ian Kershaw, author of To Hell and Back, The End, Fateful Choices, and Making Friends with Hitler, is a British historian of twentieth-century Germany noted for his monumental biographies of Adolf Hitler. In 2002 he received his knighthood for Services to History. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, of the Royal Historical Society, of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, and of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung in Bonn.
"Magisterial.... Kershaw handles the dark materials of his story
with extraordinary grace, weaving his themes together with
admirable analytical clarity.... Kershaw's account is illuminating
precisely because it tightens the focus of the analysis, allowing
us to see the continent as a diagram of contending forces, like the
storm fronts and wind barbs on a weather map."--Christopher Clark,
The New York Review of Books "Remarkable and eminently readable....
Kershaw's book will deliver a jolt to American readers."--Boston
Globe "Mr. Kershaw has written a fair-minded, deeply researched and
highly readable book that will serve as the first point of
departure for anyone wishing to understand Europe's most terrible
decades."--The Wall Street Journal "Magisterial."--The Economist
"Well suited to casual readers and professional historians alike,
this enlightening consideration of the World Wars and the interwar
years is a worthwhile purchase. It will delight fans of Barbara
Tuchman's The Proud: A Portrait of the World Before the War,
1890-1914."--Library Journal "Kershaw's strength is political and
economic history... and he uncovers a number of largely forgotten
events.... [A] well-organized history."--Publishers Weekly
"Kershaw manages to cover a vast canvas of events with judicious
skill and immense learning, never getting bogged down in detail or
devoting excessive space to his special area of German expertise.
We move at a fair clip, and always feel that we are in the hands of
a master historian with a firm grasp of his mountainous
material."--The Spectator (UK)
"Even those who know this history well will find much to shock them
in these pages. They will find much to enlighten them too, for it
is not just a catalogue of horrors, but also a rigorous analysis of
causes."--The Times (UK)
"Other historians' books on the same period may be flashier or more
provocative. But to read Kershaw on Europe's bloody century is to
be driven through a ravaged landscape in the sleek, smooth comfort
of a Rolls-Royce, guided by a historian who probably knows the
territory better than anybody else on the planet."--The Sunday
Times (UK)
"[Kershaw's] thoughtful and comprehensive history is likely to
become a classic."--The Observer (UK) "[A] political, economic and
military history of the entire continent of Europe.... There are no
easy explanations for the disasters that overwhelmed individuals
who were caught... in the living hells fuelled by militarism,
ethnic-racist politics, class conflict and economic crises. Kershaw
leads his readers through this complex history in a clear and
compelling manner."--Prospect (UK)
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