Low-Power Processors and Systems on Chips

After 'the war to end all wars', men from across the globe converged on Paris to put the rhetoric into practice and hammer out a lasting peace. At the heart of this ambitious project were the very different leaders of the three great powers - Lloyd George, Woodrow Wilson and Georges Clemenceau - but thousands of others came too, each with a different agenda. Kings, prime ministers, foreign ministers and their many advisers rubbed shoulders with journalists and lobbyists for a hundred different causes from Armenian independence to women's rights. For six extraordinary months, from January to July 1919, Paris was effectively the centre of world government. Empires were dismantled, new countries created. Revolutionary Russia was sidelined, the Arabs ignored, China alienated. Then, as now, the problems of Kosovo, the Kurds and Palestine took centre stage. Margaret MacMillan's epic account of the Paris conference succeeds not only in making the momentous decisions of almost one hundred years ago relevant to today, but in bringing the past vividly to life. This is history as it should be written: packed with thumbnail sketches of the main movers and shakers, yet generous to those (among them T E Lawrence and Ho Chi Minh) who hovered hopefully on the periphery. Of course we now know that the would-be peacemakers failed dismally to prevent another war, but MacMillan argues that they have been treated unfairly, scapegoated for the mistakes and wilful evil of those who came later. Daring but fair, pacey yet scholarly, MacMillan leaves no stone unturned. This is a deserving winner of no less than three prizes - the BBC Four Samuel Johnson Prize, the Duff Cooper Prize and the Hessell-Tiltman Prize - and a must-read for any serious student of the 20th century. (Kirkus UK)