The First Total War

by Bell, David A.

• ISBN13: 9780618919819
• ISBN10: 0618919813
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-01-16
• Publisher: HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY (TRADE DIV

Summary

The twentieth century is usually seen as "the century of total war," but as the historian David Bell argues in this landmark work, the phenomenon actually began much earlier, in the age of Napoleon. Bell takes us from campaigns of "extermination" in the blood-soaked fields of western France to savage street fighting in ruined Spanish cities to central European battlefields where tens of thousands died in a single day. Between 1792 and 1815, Europe plunged into an abyss of destruction, and our modern attitudes toward war were born. Ever since, the dream of perpetual peace and the nightmare of total war have been bound tightly together in the Western world-where "wars of liberation," such as the one in Iraq, can degenerate into gruesome guerrilla conflict. With a historian's keen insight and a journalist's flair for detail, Bell exposes the surprising parallels between Napoleon's day and our own in a book that is as timely and important as it is unforgettable.

Author Biography

David A. Bell is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Johns Hopkins and a contributing editor for the New Republic. A graduate of Harvard College, he completed his Ph.D. at Princeton and taught for several years at Yale. Bell has written for the New York Times, Slate, and Time, and was featured on the History Channel’s program on the French Revolution.

Table of Contents

Maps and Illustrations	p. viii
Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
Officers, Gentlemen, and Poets	p. 21
Conscience, Commerce, and History	p. 52
Declaring Peace; Declaring War	p. 84
The Last Crusade	p. 120
The Exterminating Angels	p. 154
The Lure of the Eagle	p. 186
Days of Glory	p. 223
War's Red Altar	p. 263
Epilogue	p. 302
Notes	p. 321
Bibliography	p. 360
Index	p. 397
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