To End All Wars

A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918

By: Adam Hochschild

Narrated by: Arthur Morey

Length: 16 hrs and 26 mins

Publisher's summary

World War I stands as one of history's most senseless spasms of carnage, defying rational explanation. In a riveting, suspenseful narrative with haunting echoes for our own time, Adam Hochschild brings it to life as never before. He focuses on the long-ignored moral drama of the war's critics, alongside its generals and heroes.

Thrown in jail for their opposition to the war were Britain's leading investigative journalist, a future winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, and an editor who, behind bars, published a newspaper for his fellow inmates on toilet paper. These critics were sometimes intimately connected to their enemy hawks: one of Britain's most prominent women pacifist campaigners had a brother who was commander in chief on the Western Front. Two well-known sisters split so bitterly over the war that they ended up publishing newspapers that attacked each other.

Today, hundreds of military cemeteries spread across the fields of northern France and Belgium contain the bodies of millions of men who died in the "war to end all wars". Can we ever avoid repeating history?

©2011 Adam Hochschild (P)2011 Tantor

Critic reviews

"[Hochschild] has written an original, engrossing account that gives the war's opponents (largely English) prominent place." ( Publishers Weekly)

"The lives of the author’s many characters dovetail elegantly in this moving, accessible book...An ambitious narrative that presents a teeming worldview through intimate, human portraits." ( Kirkus Reviews)

"This is a book to make one feel deeply and painfully, and also to think hard." (Christopher Hitchens, New York Times Book Review)

The best WW I history I have ever read.

The attention to detail involving the causes of WW I and the vivid descriptions of the WW I trench warfare makes this an exceptional history and a very well-written book.

Excellent history, easy to listen to

10 years or so ago, in high school, we barely covered WWI. This book was excellent because it told the story through a different perspective, focusing on many different people and offering causes 20 years before the beginning of the war. it opened my eyes to how much destruction and bloodshed actually happened, and for what, and how it set the stage for WWII. it was in-depth yet very easy to understand. Arthur Morey's voice is one I could listen to forever, I will find more books he narrates.

Minor editing errors

Pacing by author and narration were excellent. I learned information on the fighting and personal stories; that is the point, right?
Criticism is similar to other audible products: the Parts & Chapters of the written book - and thus read by narrator - don’t match the audible chapters and there are no Parts. Is it possible to match the audible format exactly to the hard copy format?

The Rise of the Working Class

I have spent the past 6 months reading books and University classes on World War 1. I feel I am getting to know this subject in all it's aspects. This book is a bit different in that Hochschild chose to show how the war effected some key families he chose to write about in depth. Hochschild provides vivid descriptions of the world on the brink of war, during the war and then its aftermath. He provides vivid insights to the empire proponents(Milner), socialist dissenters( Kein Hardie) radical suffragette's such as the Pankhurst women. It was supprising how much time he spent on the suffragettes. He wrote about how families were torn apart by various members on different sides of the war, such as Sir Gen John French head of the British Army and his sister Charlotte Desparde who was a suffragette and ran charity shops in the poorest section of London and was against the war, she was also an active member of the labour party and a novelist. He pointed out the forming of a department of propaganda using famous author's such as Kipling, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to provide positive information to help recruit men for the army. This was done again in WWII. He provided an in-depth view of Bertrand Russell and his opposition of the war.
As in many books he covers the stupidity of the Army leaders in fighting with tactics from the last war which caused the wasteful loss of many men. This book spend more in-depth coverage of those who opposed the war either pacifist such the Quakers to socialist. World War 1 brought about the decline of the royal houses of Europe and the Peer's and saw the rise to power of the working middle class families. Women and working men got the vote in England. Hochschild points out the mistakes made that led to WWII.
Arthur Morey did an excellent job narrating the book. Hochschild did a good job of reporting as a historian and avoided prejudice view points This is a must read for those who want to learn about what happened to those who opposed the war and the politics of the time.

Very well told rendering of WW I

If you could sum up To End All Wars in three words, what would they be?

Rich folks suck.

What other book might you compare To End All Wars to and why?

Hochschild "Burying the Chains" is about the struggle to end slavery in the nineteenth century. One can't understand the two world wars without understanding that less than a century earlier, three-quarters of the world's population lived in some form of slavery, serfdom or indentured servitude.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

Rich folks suck.

Any additional comments?

OK...not *all* rich folks suck. First book I've read about this era and this war that recognizes class consciousness. It's a great book to read for "Downton Abbey" fans...which I am.

British social turmoil during the Great War

What did you love best about To End All Wars?

The last chapter, where the author laid out the remaining years of the lives of the main characters in the story.

What did you like best about this story?

The personal side of the relationships these people had with each other during the war and how the war changed those relationships.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

The first British soldier to die in the war is buried seven yards away from the last British soldier to die in the war. Their graves face each other. They died in essentially the same place.

Great for a history nut like myself

As someone who loves history (especially that of the first world war), this is a must listen. The perspective given by Hochschild here isn't a common one, and it gave me a new idea of what the environment for those at home during the war was like.

Attitudes and actions on home fronts

A very comprehensive telling of the many ways people in (mostly) Great Britain responded to the demand for nationalism in wartime. Among the things included here are the hopes that working classes could be united internationally, anti-colonial and women's suffrage movements, and Rudyard Kipling's jingoism and tragic loss (his son among the many casualties). Well read and moving.
Audible 20 review sweepstakes entry

Riveting Stuff, Highly Recommend

Wow. What a great book. So much fascinating information delivered in an easy-to-digest way. It specifically addresses British involvement in WWI, and issues like the suffragettes, the labor movement, and Irish Independence all come into play. The personal stories Hochschild sets against the long, stupid war work well to keep the reader engaged. He does an excellent job of weaving together the individuals, the nations, the politics, the problems on the various home fronts, the rise of socialism, old vs. new forms of warfare, the death of the empire, and so much more. This war was devastating and senseless, and it set the stage for much of the warfare to follow in the 20th century. Highly recommend, even if you're not usually into history or politics.

The narrator was fantastic. Only downside of the audiobook is that it was a little difficult for me to keep track of all the players at the outset, but as the book went on, I had them all sorted out. Also the physical book has photos and maps, but the Audible audiobook did not have PDFs available as they sometimes do. It wasn't a huge deal, just something to note.

Wow! Incredible Listen!

this book was riveting. I felt the author did a great job weaving many disparate threads into a seamless narrative portraying the failures and challenges of WWI from Britain's perspective. At first I didn't think I would like the narrator -- much more intellectual and not as much character portrayal than I tend to like. But he got under my skin and I really enjoyed his approach.