Cover of Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World

Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World

by Margaret MacMillan · 2001

+ Want to read

'Without question, Margaret MacMillan's Paris 1919 is the most honest and engaging history ever written about those fateful months after World War I when the maps of Europe were redrawn. Brimming with lucid analysis, elegant character sketches, and geopolitical pathos, it is essential reading.'

Read more

Between January and July 1919, after "the war to end all wars," men and women from around the world converged on Paris to shape the peace. Center stage, for the first time in history, was an American president, Woodrow Wilson, who with his Fourteen Points seemed to promise to so many people the fulfillment of their dreams. Stern, intransigent, impatient when it came to security concerns and wildly idealistic in his dream of a League of Nations that would resolve all future conflict peacefully, Wilson is only one of the larger-than-life characters who fill the pages of this extraordinary book. David Lloyd George, the gregarious and wily British prime minister, brought Winston Churchill and John Maynard Keynes. Lawrence of Arabia joined the Arab delegation. Ho Chi Minh, a kitchen assistant at the Ritz, submitted a petition for an independent Vietnam.

For six months, Paris was effectively the center of the world as the peacemakers carved up bankrupt empires and created new countries. This book brings to life the personalities, ideals, and prejudices of the men who shaped the settlement. They pushed Russia to the sidelines, alienated China, and dismissed the Arabs. They struggled with the problems of Kosovo, of the Kurds, and of a homeland for the Jews.

The peacemakers, so it has been said, failed dismally; above all they failed to prevent another war. Margaret MacMillan argues that they have unfairly been made the scapegoats for the mistakes of those who came later. She refutes received ideas about the path from Versailles to World War II and debunks the widely accepted notion that reparations imposed on the Germans were in large part responsible for the Second World War.

A landmark work of narrative history, Paris 1919 is the first full-scale treatment of the Peace Conference in more than twenty-five years. It offers a scintillating view of those dramatic and fateful days when much of the modern world was sketched out, when countries were created—Iraq, Yugoslavia, Israel—whose troubles haunt us still.

Winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize, the PEN Hessell Tiltman Prize and the Duff Cooper Prize

Subject
historyhistoryMore like thisLess of thispoliticspoliticsMore like thisLess of thisbiographybiographyMore like thisLess of this
Genre
war and militarywar and militaryMore like thisLess of thishistorical fictionhistorical fictionMore like thisLess of thisWorld War IWorld War IMore like thisLess of thisWorld War IIWorld War IIMore like thisLess of this
Themes
historyhistoryMore like thisLess of thisAmerican historyAmerican historyMore like thisLess of thispoliticspoliticsMore like thisLess of thismilitary historymilitary historyMore like thisLess of thispresidentspresidentsMore like thisLess of this
Setting
World War IWorld War IMore like thisLess of this20th century20th centuryMore like thisLess of thisWorld War IIWorld War IIMore like thisLess of thisParisParisMore like thisLess of thisGermanyGermanyMore like thisLess of this
Audience
adult
Length
long · 570 pages

Click a tag to see books like this one that share it. Point at it (on a phone, tap it) for less of it instead.

Read it? Sign in to help tag it.

BuyAmazonGoogle Books

BorrowOpen LibraryA library near you

MoreCompare pricesHardcover

Liked Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. Europe's Last Summer: Who Started the Great War in 1914? David Fromkin · 2004 Shares history, nonfiction, wwi
  2. A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918 G.J. Meyer · 2006 Shares history, nonfiction, wwi
  3. The Vertigo Years: Europe 1900-1914 Philipp Blom · 2008 Shares history, nonfiction, european history
  4. To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 Adam Hochschild · 2011 Shares history, nonfiction, wwi
See more recommendations →

“People who read Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World tend to reach for these next.”

  1. Vienna 1814: How the Conquerors of Napoleon Made War, Peace, and Love at the Congress of Vienna David King · 2008
  2. Cataclysm: The First World War as Political Tragedy David Stevenson · 2004
  3. Vimy Pierre Berton · 1986
  4. The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914 Barbara W. Tuchman · 1962

“If you want more of the same (history), start with these.”

  1. Paris at the End of the World: How the City of Lights Soared in Its Darkest Hour, 1914-1918 John Baxter · 2014
  2. Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age Modris Eksteins · 1989
  3. 1916: A Global History Keith Jeffery · 2016
  4. The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931 Adam Tooze · 2014

“If it was the wwi that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 Christopher Clark · 2012
  2. The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End Robert Gerwarth · 2016
  3. The Long Shadow: The Legacies of the Great War in the Twentieth Century David Reynolds · 2014
  4. The Guns of August Barbara W. Tuchman · 1962

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. 1946: The Making of the Modern World Victor Sebestyen · 2014
  2. Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East Michael B. Oren · 2001
  3. Flashpoints: The Emerging Crisis in Europe George Friedman · 2015
  4. Myths, Illusions, and Peace: Finding a New Direction for America in the Middle East Dennis Ross, David Makovsky · 2009

Report a problem