Paris, 1919

In January 1919, Woodrow Wilson, David Lloyd George and Georges Clemenceau arrive in Paris for six months of talks meant to rebuild the world after the First World War. The president, the British prime minister and the French premier hold the most weight among the victorious powers.

The Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, German and Russian empires are being taken apart, and the conference redraws the map of Europe and the Middle East. Its decisions produce Iraq and Yugoslavia, and a mandate for Palestine.

This is narrative history. Margaret MacMillan, a historian who is also Lloyd George's great-granddaughter, uses private letters and diaries from the conference. She shows the personalities and rivalries of the leaders, along with the delegations that arrive pressing competing territorial claims.

The book also takes on the long argument over what the peacemakers left behind. MacMillan disputes the popular view that the Treaty of Versailles and its reparations put Europe on a fixed road to the Second World War.

British editions carry the title Peacemakers, with a subtitle about the conference's attempt to end war. The book has received both the Duff Cooper Prize and the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize for history.