Niall Ferguson's "The War of the World: History's Age of Hatred" re-tells the st
ory of history's most savage century as a continual war that raged for 100 years
. At the beginning of the twentieth century, globalizing, booming economies marr
ied to technological breakthroughs seemed to promise a better world for most peo
ple. Instead, the 20th century proved to be overwhelmingly the most violent, fri
ghtening and brutalized in history with fanatical, often genocidal warfare engul
fing most societies between the outbreak of the First World War and the end of t
he Cold War.
What turned it into a bloodbath? From the plains of Poland to th
e killing fields of Cambodia, Niall Ferguson reveals how economic boom-and-bust,
decaying empires and - above all - poisonous ideas of race led men to treat eac
h other as aliens. It was an age of hatred that ended with the twilight, not the
triumph, of the West. And, he warns, it could happen all over again.
