In this classic account, he dramatically details how the tides of despair and triumph flowed and ebbed as the political and military leaders of the time navigated the dangerous currents of world conflict.Churchill vividly recounts the major campaigns that shaped the war: the furious attacks of the Marne, the naval maneuvers off Jutland, Verdun's “soul-stirring frenzy,” and the surprising victory of Chemins des Dames. Here, too, he re-creates the dawn of modern warfare: the buzz of airplanes overhead, trench combat, artillery thunder, and the threat of chemical warfare. In Churchill's inimitable voice we hear how “the war to end all wars” instead gave birth to every war that would follow, including the current war in Iraq. Written with unprecedented flair and knowledge of the events, The World Crisis remains the single greatest history of World War I, essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand the twentieth century.

    It seeks to give an account of those elements in the culture of Europe which are derived from the Islamic world. Broadly speaking, the Legacies of Greece and Rome are the legacies of two homogeneous and original cultures,each emanating from a definite geographical centre. The Legacy of the Middle Ages is the legacy of an epoch in the development of western European civilization. The Legacy of Israel is 'the contribution that has come to the sum of human thought from Judaism and from the Jewish view of the world'. The Legacy of Islam is to be understood in a different sense from any of these. It is a provocative title, the meaning of which isonly fully explained by the book itself. The nearest parallel is the Legacy of Israel. But whereas it is from the religion of the Jews that the complexion of the Legacy of Israel is derived,in the Legacy of Islam we do not treat of the Legacy of the religion of Muhammad qua religion: the reader will learn from this book that there is little that is peculiarly Islamic in thecontributions which Occidental and Oriental Muslims have made to European culture. On the contrary, the legacy has proved least valuable where religion has exerted the strongestinfluence, as in Muslim Law. But Islam is the fundamental fact which made the Legacy possible. It was under the protection and patronage of the Islamic Empire that the arts and sciences which this book describes flourished...

    As he told me on more than one occasion, he had every intention of bringing out another edition. In Marc Bloch's own mind this was not simply a matter of reissuing the original text. He knew, none better, that time stops for no historian, that every good piece of historical writing needs to be rewritten after twenty years: otherwise the writer has failed in his objective, failed to goad others into testing his foundations and improving on his rasher hypotheses by subjecting them to greater precision. Marc Bloch was not given time to refashion his great book as he would have wished. One wonders whether he would in fact ever have brought himself to do it. I have the impression that the prospect of this somewhat dreary and certainly difficult task (however one may try to avoid it, revision of an earlier work is always hampered by the original design, which offers few easy loopholes for escape) held less appeal than the excitement of conceiving and executing an entirely new book. However this may be, our friend has carried this secret, with so many others, to his grave. The fact remains that one of our historical classics, now more than twenty years old, is due for republication and is here presented to the reader.