Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The First Total War: Napoleon's Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It

The First Total War: Napoleon's Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It

Bell, David A.

Paperback

French HistoryNapoleonic WarsWeapons of Mass Destruction

Publisher Price: $21.99

ISBN10: 0618919813
ISBN13: 9780618919819
Publisher: Mariner Books
Published: Jan 16 2008
Pages: 432
Weight: 0.90
Height: 1.10 Width: 5.30 Depth: 8.00
Language: English
A mesmerizing account that illuminates not just the Napoleonic wars but all of modern history . . . It reads like a novel (Lynn Hunt, Eugen Weber Professor of Modern European History, UCLA).

The twentieth century is usually seen as the century of total war. But as the historian David Bell argues in this landmark work, the phenomenon actually began much earlier, in the era of muskets, cannons, and sailing ships--in the age of Napoleon.

In a sweeping, evocative narrative, Bell takes us from campaigns of extermination in the blood-soaked fields of western France to savage street fighting in ruined Spanish cities to central European battlefields where tens of thousands died in a single day. Between 1792 and 1815, Europe plunged into an abyss of destruction.

It was during this time, Bell argues, that our modern attitudes toward war were born. Ever since, the dream of perpetual peace and the nightmare of total war have been bound tightly together in the Western world--right down to the present day, in which the hopes for an end to history after the Cold War quickly gave way to renewed fears of full-scale slaughter.

With a historian's keen insight and a journalist's flair for detail, Bell exposes the surprising parallels between Napoleon's day and our own--including the way that ambitious wars of liberation, such as the one in Iraq, can degenerate into a gruesome guerrilla conflict. The result is a book that is as timely and important as it is unforgettable.

Thoughtful and original . . . Bell has mapped what is a virtually new field of inquiry: the culture of war.--Steven L. Kaplan, Goldwin Smith Professor of European History, Cornell University

2 different editions

Also available

Also in

French History

View All