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David Stevenson holds the Stevenson Chair of International History at the London School of Economics & Political Science, where he has twice been Head of Department and teaches and lectures on the history of international relations. He is the author or editor of seven books about the origins, course, and consequences of the First World War. His publications include Armaments and the Coming of War: Europe, 1904-1914 (OUP, 1996), 1914-1918: the History of the First World War (Penguin, 2004), With Our Backs to the Wall: Victory and Defeat in 1918 (Penguin, 2011), and (co-edited with Thomas Mahnken and Joseph Maiolo), Arms Races in International Politics: from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-First Century (OUP, 2016).
David Stevenson's book is a cool and original account of the heat of war in 1917. It surpasses previous studies in terms of its global range and its archival depth. Here is a history of decision-making by the sleepwalkers who kept on their murky path into war three years after its outbreak, and of those few - including Lenin - who found a way out of the slaughterhouse. Stevenson's is history as tragedy, with hubris bringing down those who thought they could master the destructive forces of the Great War. The European nations had dug themselves by 1917 into a war trap seemingly without exit - this is the starting point of David Stevenson's new book. The events of 1917, war, peace, and revolution, the struggle to get out of the war, get here a thorough reassessment. The book is an example for the combination of competent analysis with a gripping narrative and clear judgement. Holger Afflerbach, University of Leeds
