Without doubt, this is Ferguson's'best work to date... one of the most revolutionary reinterpretations of this era' Tribune

A sweeping and handsomely controlled narrative in which he balances wide-screen storytelling and close-focus anecdote...Even those who have read widely in twentieth-century history will find fresh, surprising details.

The beginning of the twentieth century saw human civilization at its most enlightened, well-educated, globalized and wealthy. What turned it into a bloodbath？

In his sweeping, epic new book Niall Ferguson re-tells the story of history's most savage century as a continual war that raged for 100 years. From the plains of Poland to the killing fields of Cambodia, he reveals how economic boom-and-bust,decaying empires and, above all, poisonous ideas of race led men to treat each other as aliens. It was an age of hatred that ended with the twilight, not the triumph, of the West. And,he shows, it could happen all over again.

List of Illustrations

List of Maps

Introduction

PART I The Great Train Crash

Empires and Races

Orient Express

Fault Lines

The Contagion of War

Graves of Nations

PART II Empire-States

The Plan

Strange Folk

An Incidental Empire

Defending the Indefensible

The Pity of Peace

PART III Killing Space

Blitzkrieg

Through the Looking Glass

Killers and Collaborators

The Gates of Hell

PART IV A Tainted Triumph

The Osmosis of War

Kaputt

Epilogue: The Descent of the West

Appendix: The War of the World in Historical Perspective

Sources and Bibliography

Acknowledgements

Index