This text provides an innovative global military history that joins three periods-World War I, the interwar years, and World War II. Jeremy Black offers a comprehensive survey of both wars, comparing continuities and differences. He traces the causes of each war and assesses land, sea, and air warfare as separate dimensions. He argues that the unprecedented nature of the two wars owed much to the demographic and industrial strength of the states involved and their ability and determination to mobilize vast resources. Yet the demands of the world wars also posed major difficulties, not simply in sustaining the struggle but also in conceiving of practical strategies and operational methods in the heat and competition of ever-evolving conflict. In this process, resources, skills, leadership, morale, and alliance cohesion all proved significant. In addition to his military focus, Black considers other key dimensions of the conflicts, especially political and social influences and impacts. He thoroughly integrates the interwar years, tracing the significant continuities between the two world wars. He emphasizes how essential American financial, industrial, agricultural, and energy resources were to the Allies-both before and after the United States entered each war. Bringing the two world wars to life, Black sheds light not only on both as individual conflicts but also on the interwoven relationships between the two.

About the Author
Jeremy Black is professor of history at Exeter University and a 2018 Templeton Fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. His many books on modern war include The Age of Total War, A Century of Conflict: War, 1914-2014, and War and the World, 1450-2000.

Reviews
Jeremy Black is at his best in The World at War, 1914-1945. He skillfully synthesizes the premier scholarship of recent years with the seminal works from earlier decades. The resulting survey paints history's two bloodiest conflicts not merely in broad strokes but also in fine details. -- David J. Ulbrich, co-author of Race and Gender in Modern Western Warfare
Jeremy Black has provided another masterful work for the understanding of modern war and history. In examining the twentieth-century world wars from the aspects of strategy, logistics and resources, operational planning, effective leadership, economics, alliance relations, and peoples and societies in conflict, he highlights the commonalities of the two wars but also challenges the long-held notion of a linear interpretation of world war from 1914 to1945. -- Stan Carpenter, US Naval War College
What happened in the world of warfare between the opening guns of `The Great War' and the end of a second world war? Jeremy Black shows that attempts to tie the conflicts too closely ignore the strategic dimensions that are at least as important as battle in understanding them. His narrative spans both wars and the years between, but Black chooses land, sea, and air warfare as his organizing principles, guiding the reader smoothly through each period's biggest lessons learned or ignored by contemporaries. His clarity and logic will be very helpful to students new to the complexity of the literature on this vital era. Black's postscript is a reminder to historians and educators overly willing to succumb to the convenient notion of `The Long War' that so easily links 1914-1918 and 1939-1945. He calls that notion out for its Eurocentric frame, typical of the late twentieth century, asserting that we must view things quite differently as the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century approaches. -- Theodore F. Cook, William Paterson University of New Jersey



Book Information
ISBN 9781538108352
Author Jeremy Black
Format Paperback
Page Count 362
Imprint Rowman & Littlefield
Publisher Rowman & Littlefield
Weight(grams) 503g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 150mm * 20mm