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Books > History > World history > From 1900 > First World War
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Years of Plenty, Years of Want - France and the Legacy of the Great War (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R558
Discovery Miles 5 580
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Years of Plenty, Years of Want - France and the Legacy of the Great War (Hardcover)
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List price R648
Loot Price R558
Discovery Miles 5 580
You Save R90 (14%)
Expected to ship within 10 - 15 working days
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The Great War that engulfed Europe between 1914 and 1918 was a
catastrophe for France. French soil was the site of most of the
fighting on the Western Front. French dead were more than 1.3
million, the permanently disabled another 1.1 million,
overwhelmingly men in their twenties and thirties. The decade and a
half before the war had been years of plenty, a time of increasing
prosperity and confidence remembered as the Belle Epoque or the
good old days. The two decades that followed its end were years of
want, loss, misery, and fear. In 1914, France went to war convinced
of victory. In 1939, France went to war dreading defeat. To explain
the burden of winning the Great War and embracing the collapse that
followed, Benjamin Martin examines the national mood and daily life
of France in July 1914 and August 1939, the months that preceded
the two world wars. He presents two titans: Georges Clemenceau,
defiant and steadfast, who rallied a dejected nation in 1918, and
Edouard Daladier,hesitant and irresolute, who espoused appeasement
in 1938 though comprehending its implications. He explores novels
by a constellation of celebrated French writers who treated the
Great War and its social impact, from Colette to Irene Nemirovsky,
from Francois Mauriac to Antoine de Saint-Exupery. And he devotes
special attention to Roger Martin du Gard, the1937 Nobel Laureate,
whose roman-fleuve The Thibaults is an unrivaled depiction of
social unraveling and disillusionment. For many in France, the
legacy of the Great War was the vow to avoid any future war no
matter what the cost. They cowered behind the Maginot Line, the
fortifications along the eastern border designed to halt any future
German invasion. Others knew that cost would be too great and
defended the "Descartes Line": liberty and truth, the declared
values of French civilization. In his distinctive and vividly
compelling prose, Martin recounts this struggle for the soul of
France.
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