Paris 1919 : Six Months That Changed the World

Rating:
Summary: Author's analysis too cautious
Review: Courage Ann, courage! Your copious research into the Peace Conference, balanced against the necessary scope of the work, would support a separate section in which to explicitly air those critiques of the major players you otherwise bury in the separate sections. Self determination, when married to ethnic nationalism spells disaster - check! The mercurial impact of electorates on foreign policy - check! The obstacles closed door diplomacy faces in crafting a political technique that reconciles with the dreams of those electorates - check! The definite impact of non-governmental organizations with a world driven by Great Power politics - check! The monumental loss of a new world order, the likes of which we can only now, from a post-modern moment, see as lost in the unilateralism of the Bush administration, the ashes of the War on Terror - check! Your work bears out these insights Ann, and counsels us, wisely, patiently, ironically and with gentle humor that international peace cannot die so long as the people may dream of it. Your work should also have taken the courage it bestows on us for its own accord with history. Courage!

Rating:
Summary: The real Wilson legacy
Review: This is a very good book which deals with a lot of history over a short period of time. While the book actually covers more than just 6 months in Paris during 1919 as the allies dealt with the end of the Ottoman Empire, the demise of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and the costs of WWI. Macmillan does a good job of summarizing the events and the men involved. Most revealing to me in many chapters was the extraordinary naiveté of Woodrow Wilson in representing America's long term interests as a world player. Not just his on-again, off-again adherence to the 14 points, but his total lack of understanding of domestic politics in getting the Senate to ratify the treaty of the League of Nation's. Many of the decisions made during the conference led to the events which shaped the run-up to WWII, not to mention the lines drawn in the sand to carve up the Middle East and laying the seeds of the problems that are with us today in the form of militant Islamists, the Palestine question and the formation of a Jewish state after WWII. A better book on the Middle East issue is Fromkin's "A Peace to end all Peace", but he is able to go into detail about a segment of the issues that Macmillan deals with. For the general reader who wants to know how we got to where we are today in world affairs, this book is a good start. While the armistice of November may have been celebrated as the end of the war, it really was just a temporary lull in major conflict, as many local wars continued for many years afterwards.