The Modern Scholar

Six Months That Changed the World: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919

By: Dr. Margaret MacMillan

Narrated by: Dr. Margaret MacMillan

Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins

Publisher's summary

The world will never see another peace conference like the one which took place in Paris in 1919. For six months, the world's major leaders - including Woodrow Wilson, president of the United States, David Lloyd George, prime minister of Great Britain, and Georges Clemenceau, prime minister of France - met to discuss the peace settlements which were to end World War One.

Download the accompanying reference guide.

©2003 Margaret MacMillan (P)2003 Recorded Books, LLC

Great Read

This is wonderfully entertaining - The content is informative, important, relevant and illuminating.

The author/narrator does a great job.

The text is an easy read, yet not simplistic.

Great book. Did you know that Czechoslovakia 'stole' the Sudetenland from Austria, giving Hitler a pretext to invade them twenty years later? Fascinating.

Keep On Learning!

How did I miss this in school, way back when? This story of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference is told in a most interesting way and very relevant to our understanding of the world today. I am grateful for Dr. MacMillan, who wrote and presents this illuminating account of a critical historic event. I just keep getting smarter and smarter, the more I listen!

The story is well organized and easy to follow. It probably helps to have some idea of the geography involved- could look at a map if you're not familiar with it. Note you get a pdf with the download that has additional background information that sheds even more light on the subject. I highly recommend.

Best Audible Title Yet

Dr MacMillan has a great voice. I felt like she was speaking to me - not reading a script. Excellent articulation and enunciation. I am finding myself listening to this one again and again, from different start points. My friends at work are amazed by how much I now know about this important event in modern history. If Dr MacMillan comes up with another title - I'm buying it. Wish I'd had professors as interesting as her in university...

Great Listen

I really enjoyed Margaret's reading. I now have a much better understanding of the post war scene in 1919.

Highly recommended

I especially liked the small anecdotes Prof. MacMillan inserts in between the events. Her analysis of the personalities involved in the conference together with those anecdotes gives a human perspective to the decisions made in Paris in 1919.

The class I wish I had growing up

Very informative and engaging. I have acquired a wealth of knowledge about world geopolitics, history and overall climate at WWI. My only reservation is the speed at which the content is delivered. I’ve had to change the speed to 0.75 and still needed to rewind every so often to avoid missing important information.

Wonderful, very well organized and digestible

Margaret MacMillan is a wonderful speaker. This is a brilliant series of lectures which I enjoyed very much.

Not the audiobook

This is not the audio version of the book, but rather a series of lectures from the author on the same subject. I’m still enjoying it very much, but do not expect this to be the audio version of the book.

Valuable for life in 21st Century VERY interesting

Prof. MacMillan's amazingly fluid delivery and analysis of The Treaty of Versailles is fascinating! The slicing-up of the world, the mostly unfortunate decisions made back then has had and continues to have such dire political and social consequences right up to present day.

Excellent Narration

DISCLAIMER: I hated history all throughout my school years because of the monotone teachers, the uninteresting subjects, the repeat of the same slanted homogenized views, how events were discombobulated and didn't flow so you could make sense as to how one event led to another. That being said, I was also young and less able to appreciate the magnitude of information this book covers. Dr. Margaret MacMillan is magnificent in her breaking down of all the time periods, personalities, societal, cultural, religious, political, financial, geographical issues that related to the players involved in the Paris Peace Conference. She explains with great detail what happened in various parts of the world prior to the Conference, what the expectations were for the Conference (according to each participant) and how the decisions made in 1919 still have a far-reaching impact. It also allows one to empathize with all the different nations/peoples as to what their hopes were for the future. It also made me want to go back even further (especially if Dr. MacMillan is presenting) in history to understand other events and civilizations prior to what is covered here.

Fantastic.

Easy to understand and covers A LOT of ground (literally).