To Hell and Back
  • Published: 18 July 2016
  • ISBN: 9780141980430
  • Imprint: Penguin Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 624
  • RRP: $29.99
Categories:
Share…

To Hell and Back

Europe, 1914-1949

Formats & editions
Paperback
18 Jul 2016
EBook
18 Jul 2016
Buy from…
Amazon Booktopia Dymocks QBD Readings Your Bookstore Abbeys Boomerang Find local retailers Find local retailers Collins Fishpond Gleebooks Harry Hartog Kinokuniya Robinsons The Nile Mighty Ape

From one of our greatest historians, the epic story of how 20th-century Europe went to hell and back

In the summer of 1914 most of Europe plunged into a war so catastrophic that it unhinged the continent's politics and beliefs in a way that took generations to recover from. The disaster terrified its survivors, shocked that a civilization that had blandly assumed itself to be a model for the rest of the world had collapsed into a chaotic savagery beyond any comparison. In 1939 Europeans would initiate a second conflict that managed to be even worse - a war in which the killing of civilians was central and which culminated in the Holocaust. To Hell and Back tells this story with humanity, flair and originality. Kershaw gives a compelling narrative of events, but he also wrestles with the most difficult issues that the events raise - with what it meant for the Europeans who initiated and lived through such fearful times - and what this means for us.
  • Published: 18 July 2016
  • ISBN: 9780141980430
  • Imprint: Penguin Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 624
  • RRP: $29.99
Categories:
Share…

About the author

Ian Kershaw

Ian Kershaw is Professor of Modern history at the University of Sheffield. For services to history he was given the German award of the Federal Cross of Merit in 1994. he was knighted in 2002 and awarded the Norton Medlicott Medal by the Historical Association in 2004.
He was historical advisor to three BBC series: The Nazis: A Warning From History, War of the Century and Auschwitz.
His most recent books are Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris and 1936-1945: Nemesis, which received the Wolfson Literary Award for History and the Bruno Kreisky Prize in Austria for the Political Book of the Year, and was joint winner of the inaugural British Academy Book Prize; Making Friends with hitler: Lord Londonberry and Britain's Road to War, which won the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography in 2005; and, most recently, Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions that Changed the World, 1940-1941.

Also by Ian Kershaw

Personality and Power
Roller-Coaster
Luck of the Devil
Making Friends with Hitler
The End
Hitler
Fateful Choices
See all

Praise for To Hell and Back

A great achievement ... There could hardly be a more judicious guide to this bloody terrain ... a stark lesson in man's capacity for evil

Dominic Sandbrook, The Sunday Times

A triumph ... one of a tiny handful of historians whose books will still be read in 100 years

Laurence Rees, The Mail on Sunday

Chilling epic-size history ... should be required reading

Harold Evans, The New York Times

The story of how the Old World plunged toward hell for 30 years ... There is no man better qualified than Kershaw to take us through the dark valleys of the world wars and the two sombre intervening decades ... fair-minded, deeply researched and highly readable

Brendan Simms, Wall Street Journal

We are in the hands of a master historian

Nigel Jones, Spectator

Few authors would have the ability, and perhaps the determination, to take on the history of both world wars and the connecting decades at this level of sophistication, depth and breadth

Robert Tombs, The Times

Authoritative

Nicholas Shakespeare, Telegraph

Kershaw leads his readers through this complex history in a clear and compelling manner

Joanna Bourke, Prospect
penguin pop image
penguin pop image