First World War: Still No End in Sight

By: Frank Furedi

Narrated by: Greg Wagland

Length: 12 hrs and 19 mins

Publisher's summary

That the conflicts unleashed by Great War did not end in 1918 is well known. World War II and the Cold War clearly constitute key moments in the drama that began in August 1914. This audiobook argues that the battle of ideas which crystallised during the course of the Great War continue to the present. It claims that the disputes about lifestyles and identity - the Culture Wars of today - are only the latest expressions of a century long conflict. There are many influences that contributed to the outbreak of World War One. One significant influence was the cultural tension and unease that disposed significant numbers of artists, intellectuals and young people to regard the War as an opportunity give meaning to their existence. Later these tensions merged with social unrest and expressed themselves through the new ideologies of the Left and the Right. While these ideologies have become exhausted the conflicts of culture persist to this date. That is why there is Still No End In Sight for the battle of ideas set in motion in August 1914. Modern wars did not only lead to the loss of millions of lives. Wars also played a significant role in changing attitudes towards the political ideals of modern time. The Great War called into question the future of liberal democracy. It led to the emergence of radical ideologies, which were in turn discredited through the experience of the Second World War and the Cold War. The current Culture Wars have significantly eroded the status of the values associated with modernity.Through exploring the battle of ideas set in motion in August 1914 - First World War: Still No End In Sight - provides a framework for understanding the changing focus of political conflict from ideology to culture.

©2014 Frank Furedi (P)2014 Audible, Inc.

Interesting

This is a newly published book (May 2014) about the WWI by Frank Furedi, a professor of Sociology at the University of Kent at Canterbury. Furedi contest with unlimited pessimism and references to an army of intellectual social commentators, academics and sociologist, (not a single reference or diary by a common person) that spans the century is that the First World War has never ended. Furedi quoted Tony Judt (“Ill Fares the Land”),” the First World War was followed by epidemics, revolutions, the failure of States, currency collapse, unemployment, dictatorship and fascism. Democracy, however, has proved resilient, if battered”. Furedi is not the first to argue that the Great War brought about our decline of trust in our institutions, notions of authority and our lack of values. Furedi’s argument in this book hinges on three main concepts, usefully emboldened in the text.
1)“Existential insecurity”, which he sees as extending throughout western society
2)“Exhaustion” which is more than battle-weariness and closer to the “end of everything” that has fuelled cultural studies since the oil crisis in the 1970s.
3)The last is an “intellectual crisis experience by western capitalism-recast as the crisis of the intellectual”.
This is an interesting book about the sequence of political thinkers on liberalism, authority and power since 1914. I would have found this book’s arguments more convincing if it had been backed up with some hard detail of how people lived, and how their lives changed in the decades after 1918, in addition to how sociologist argued that their lives were changing. It is an interest exercise; though ultimately somewhat unconvincing in the way it follows a complex event through very different sequences of cultural and intellectual moods. The author framed the book by his own politics. He is self-described as a Libertarian with his roots in the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP). The book will stimulate your vocabulary, which makes the book ideal for an e-book as the dictionary is only a finger tap away. Jump the second chapter it is a sort of index go directly to chapter three. The narrator was Greg Wagland

Good but drags a little

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Its a good read if you are interested in the legacies of WW1 even into current times. If you are student of the war you will find it engaging. Its not so much for the casual War History buff.

Long Arc History

This book offers a good look at how powerful under currents drive history over the long term.

a bit heavy at times but all relevant! listentwice

a bit heavy but all relevant!
listen twice for good understating
good reader
kept interest
.stick to it
good luck

Interesting thesis, but poorly argued. Skip it.

This book has an interesting thesis, but the author does a terrible job of elaborating and defending it. The author seems to be lost in his own abstractions. He only very rarely gets around to supplying any concrete evidence that demonstrates the reality of those abstractions.

Even if you think this thesis is worth exploring, I recommend skipping this book.

The narrator is good, but far too slow. I listened to the book at 125% speed.

Drivel

What disappointed you about First World War: Still No End in Sight?

I am on chapter two and thus far it is pure drivel.

What could Frank Furedi have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

Provide more substantiated facts.

Would you be willing to try another one of Greg Wagland’s performances?

no

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

The title.