A Shattered Peace (Centenary Edition): Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today
How the Treaty of Versailles is still influencing current events—with a new Foreword by Sir Harold Evans and a new Introduction by the author
For more than half a century, it has been widely recognized that the Treaty of Versailles created the circumstances that led inevitably to World War II. Less acknowledged and understood is the treaty’s profound impact on many other parts of the world—an impact that echoes to this day in the Middle East, the Far East, the Balkans, and, yes, in Iraq. In A Shattered Peace, veteran foreign correspondent David A. Andelman takes a fresh new look at the Treaty of Versailles as the point of origin for many of today’s most critical international issues.
In this revealing history, Andelman turns the spotlight on the many errors committed by the peacemakers that led to crises and bloodshed from Kosovo to Iraq, wars from Israel to Vietnam. Focusing on the small nations and minor players at the negotiations, including figures such as Ho Chi Minh and Charles de Gaulle who would later become boldfaced names, he traces the outcome of the deliberations through the history of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. Andelman also paints a vivid picture of the glittering and often chaotic social whirl that accompanied the negotiations. Elsa Maxwell threw her first party; young Franklin Delano Roosevelt flirted with Parisian widows to the humiliation of his wife, Eleanor; princesses and young gentlemen in formal attire danced gaily to the hot new sound of American jazz—all this as prime ministers Georges Clemenceau and David Lloyd George ogled huge maps, dividing up territories and cementing their nations’ positions as leading world powers for decades to come.
Complete with a new foreword by Sir Harold Evans, a new introduction from the author, and a never-before-published chapter on establishing a global economy, as well as insightful quotations from the diaries and correspondence of participants and previously unpublished photographs of the proceedings and their surroundings, A Shattered Peace will change the way you think about twentieth-century history, its influence on current events, and where we should go from here.
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Book details
- Author
- David A. Andelman
- Imprint
- Trade Paper Press, an imprint of Turner Publishing Company
- Published
- Formats
- Paperback, Hardcover
- Subjects
- History › Wars & Conflicts › World War I
Political Science › Peace
History › World - Topics
- Treaty of Versailles · World War I · World War II origins · modern geopolitics · Middle East conflicts · peace negotiations · 20th century history · international relations
- ISBN-13
- 9781620459911 (Paperback)9781630269043 (Hardcover)
About the authors
DAVID A. ANDELMAN is a foreign correspondent who reported for The New York Times and CBS News across more than eighty countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. His books include The Fourth World War and The Peacemakers.
Andelman received the Deadline Club Award for Best Opinion Writing in 2018 and 2019. He holds degrees from Harvard University and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and served as editor and publisher of World Policy Journal from 2008 to 2015.
SIR HAROLD EVANS was a British-American journalist who edited The Sunday Times of London from 1967 to 1981 and The Times from 1981 to 1982, and later served as Reuters editor-at-large from 2011 until his death. His books include They Made America and The American Century.
Evans was knighted in 2004. He founded Condé Nast Traveler in 1986 and served as president and publisher of Random House from 1990 to 1997. He died in New York City.