Product Description

With the biographer's rare genius for expressing the essence of extraordinary lives, Massie brings to life a crowd of glittering figures: the single-minded Admiral von Tirpitz; the young, ambitious Winston Churchill; the ruthless, sycophantic Chancellor Bernhard von Bulow; Britain's greatest twentieth-century Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey; and Jacky Fisher, the eccentric admiral who revolutionized the British Navy and brought forth for the first true battleship, H.M.S. Dreadnought. Their story, and the story of the era, filled with misunderstanding, missed opportunities, and events leading to unintended conclusions, unfolds like a Greek tragedy in this powerful narrative. Intimately human and dramatic, "Dreadnought" is history at its most riveting.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #73329 in Books
• Published on: 2007-12-13
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 1040 pages

Review
'Inheritor of Barbara Tuchman's mantle as the English-speaking world's pre-eminent popular historian...Robert K. Massie has now turned his attention to the arms race between Britain and Germany c.1890-1914, the most important precipitant towards the outbreak of the First World War.', Frank McLynn, .'Massie tells the story with controlled energy and attention to detail, especially human detail. It ahs not been told so well before.', Literary Review .'He can take an enormous canvas and fill every inch with action and description.', Sunday Times .'He has the supreme gift of making history live in simple, readable language.', Observer .'This is a book you are bound to enjoy. It is a chronicle of the Anglo-German naval rivalry placed against the broader background of the personal and national clashes that led to the Great War. The set pieces - the naval review of June 1897, the Jameson Raid, The Kaiser's visit to Windsor, Winston Churchill visiting the fleet, "the spring of the panther" - are dramatically recreated. The pen portraits of the political and naval establishments of Wilhelmine Germany and Victorian and Edwardian Britain are brilliantly evoked with a sharp eye for the memorable detail...Massie keeps his complex story under tight control...Monographers like myself can only envy the sheer sweep of Dreadnought and the author's rich palette of colours so deftly applied. Like Barbara Tuchman's Guns of August this is narrative history at its very best.', Financial Times

About the Author
Robert K. Massie is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Peter the Great, Nicholas and Alexandra, Dreadnought and The Romanovs: The Final Chapter. He lives in Irvington, New York

Customer Reviews

An epic of immense proportions.
It was the First World War - known at that time as "The Great War" which changed Britain and Europe forever. As the Generals on both sides sent millions and millions of men to their deaths in the carnage which they regarded as warfare, there came about a change in the psyche of the British male - a change which would herald a complete alteration in the way he thought and acted towards those of the upper, ruling classes. No longer would that British male be so quick to use such words as "M'Lord" or even "Sir." No longer would he doff his cap as a mark of respect, no longer would the ordinary police Constable be so quick to "arrest that man" just because a well dressed person had ordered him so to do.

That change in British Society continues to this day and is easily traced back to the feelings of loss and despair which came with the realisation that far too many young men had died "at the front" - even though the war itself had been won and mainland Britain had escaped unscathed.

In this epic tale, author Robert Massie delves deep into why that war occurred in the first place. Every single aspect of argument and behaviour on both sides (both military and political) is exposed and analysed. As the title of the book would suggest, the theme is the world's first great arms race. When Britain produced the first Dreadnought Battleship it rendered all other battleships obsolete at a stroke (including the remainder of the British Fleet!). From that moment onwards it was always a question of who could produce the most new Dreadnoughts in the quickest possible time. Set against this wish by both Britain and Germany to be seen as the world's supreme masters of the seas was a political intrigue which few have been able to commit to print in such a masterly fashion as is found in this book.

In short, this is one of the greatest books of our time. It is also a damn fine read.

NM

Immersive history
Very Readable, Informative, enlightening.
Its style makes you "feel youare there" in the century preceding the great war and now I really feel Ihave a good basis to understand why the "madness" couldn't be easilystopped.
Its a long read, but only due to the immense scope of interlinkedpersonalities and events required to get the whole picture. The narrativenever becomes boring despite the sheer quantity of information to impart,and this is one book I am sure I will read again, its that good!

A Meticulous Piece of Research
An initial glance at this may give the impression that it is simply about the development of the Dreadnought class of battleship and the arms race that followed their creation. This is an important issue in itself, but Massie covers much more. He provides the reader with a detailed account of relations between the great powers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and of much of the stubborness, short-sightedness and bumbling that almost accidentally led to the First World War. The book provides superb mini-biographies of key players, the Kaiser, Bismark, Asquith, the earlier years of WS Churchill and many others. For people studying international relations in that period, this is an excellent source of reference, even for those who are not specifically interested in the naval matters alone.