David A. Bell is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Johns Hopkins and a contributing editor for the New Republic. A graduate of Harvard College, he completed his Ph.D. at Princeton and taught for several years at Yale. Bell has written for the New York Times, Slate, and Time, and was featured on the History Channel's program on the French Revolution.
"Thoughtful and original . . . Bell has mapped what is a virtually new field of inquiry: the culture of war." --Steven L. Kaplan, Goldwin Smith Professor of European History, Cornell University "A mesmerizing account that illuminates not just the Napoleonic wars but all of modern history... it reads like a novel." --Lynn Hunt, Eugen Weber Professor of Modern European History, UCLA "A terrific book, fresh, original and compelling. . . a brilliant account of a fundamental historical transformation." --Keith Michael Baker, Stanford University "David Bell gives a gripping account of the transformation of European war. This is a bold and important book." --Natalie Zemon Davis, University of Toronto "As wise at it is timely, and as rich in detail as it is grand in scope." --David Armitage, Professor of History, Harvard University "A page turner . . . Everyone who hates wars . . . should read these pages." --Patrice Higonnet, Harvard University "[David Bell] is one of the best prose stylists of his generation." --Steven Englund, author of Napoleon, A Political Life "From the gripping opening paragraphs to the very end, The First Total War is . . . an historical page-turner." --Dror Wahrman, Ruth N. Halls Professor of History, Indiana University --
Bell combines his roles as professor of history at Johns Hopkins and contributing editor for the New Republic in this interpretive study arguing that history's first total war was waged during the Napoleonic era. Scholars have increasingly stressed the global aspects of the network of conflicts extending across North America, South Asia and Europe during that time. Bell goes further, presenting a fundamental transformation of war from an ordinary aspect of human existence to an apocalyptic experience whose "terrible sublimity" tested societies and individuals to their limits and ultimately became a redemptive experience. Total war developed not in the context of nationalism or revolutionary zeal, but in the fundamental sense of a "culture of war" driving participants in the direction of complete engagement and total abandonment of restraint. Ironically, the intellectual roots of this modern militarism are in the Enlightenment belief in the coming of perpetual peace. Revolutionary France transformed a moral concept into a practical one: war to emancipate humanity from its past. Bell's conclusion that this mentality survived two world wars is open to challenge, yet his appeal for the rediscovery of restraint and limitation is particularly relevant at a time of nuclear proliferation and apocalyptic rhetoric. (Jan. 12) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
"Thoughtful and original . . . Bell has mapped what is a virtually new field of inquiry: the culture of war." --Steven L. Kaplan, Goldwin Smith Professor of European History, Cornell University "A mesmerizing account that illuminates not just the Napoleonic wars but all of modern history... it reads like a novel." --Lynn Hunt, Eugen Weber Professor of Modern European History, UCLA "A terrific book, fresh, original and compelling. . . a brilliant account of a fundamental historical transformation." --Keith Michael Baker, Stanford University "David Bell gives a gripping account of the transformation of European war. This is a bold and important book." --Natalie Zemon Davis, University of Toronto "As wise at it is timely, and as rich in detail as it is grand in scope." --David Armitage, Professor of History, Harvard University "A page turner . . . Everyone who hates wars . . . should read these pages." --Patrice Higonnet, Harvard University "[David Bell] is one of the best prose stylists of his generation." --Steven Englund, author of Napoleon, A Political Life "From the gripping opening paragraphs to the very end, The First Total War is . . . an historical page-turner." --Dror Wahrman, Ruth N. Halls Professor of History, Indiana University --
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