M
Margaret Olwen Macmillan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_MacMillan
Paris, 1919
Synopsis
In January 1919, President Woodrow Wilson, British prime minister David Lloyd George, and French premier Georges Clemenceau arrived in Paris for six months of negotiations that would remake the world after the First World War. Margaret MacMillan's history follows the Paris Peace Conference as the victorious powers dismantled the Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, German, and Russian empires and drew new borders across Europe and the Middle East, creating states including Iraq, Yugoslavia, and a mandate for Palestine.
MacMillan, a historian and the great-granddaughter of Lloyd George, draws on the conference's private correspondence and diaries to portray the personalities and rivalries of the men who shaped the settlement, alongside the delegations pressing rival territorial claims. The book also takes up the peacemakers' long-disputed legacy, arguing against the popular narrative that the Treaty of Versailles and its reparations set an inevitable course toward the Second World War.
Published in the UK as Peacemakers: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War, the book won the Duff Cooper Prize and the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize for history.
Genres
Frequently asked questions
Is this book related to the author's family history?
The author is the great-granddaughter of David Lloyd George, who served as the British prime minister and was one of the central figures negotiating the peace settlements described in the book.
Does the book follow a strict chronological order?
The narrative is organized thematically and by region rather than strictly chronologically, which can lead to some overlap in the characters and events discussed across different sections.
Are there other titles for this work?
The book was originally published in the United Kingdom under the title Peacemakers: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War.