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In Disputing Disaster, Perry Anderson picks out from the highly charged historiography on the First World War one leading historian from each of the major powers that survived the conflagration: Fritz Fischer, famous historian of German war guilt; Pierre Renouvin, a disabled serviceman and preeminent authority on the conflict in France; Luigi Albertini, the Italian newspaper tycoon who, unique among scholars of the Great War, played a part in pitching his country into it; Paul W. Schroeder, the American expert on the system of Europe - an interstate relations and its breakdown in 1914; Keith Wilson, the one radical deviant from a patriotic consensus about Britain's role in the outbreak of the fighting; and, from Australia (summoned into the war as a dominion), Christopher Clark, acclaimed author of The Sleepwalkers.

Disputing Disaster offers a compelling analysis of the major competing versions of the genesis of the Great War; fresh light on the political background of its leading historians; and a novel synthesis of the determining pressures that brought the conflict to pass.

Perry Anderson is emeritus in History at UCLA, and an editor at New Left Review. Recent work: Different Speeds, Same Furies, a comparative study of Anthony Powell and Marcel Proust.