PARIS 1919

The fog of war, when it ended in Europe in 1918, left four great empires in shambles. The Versailles peace conference, however, merely ushered in what could be called the fog of peace, as the battlefield became the conference table, a fog that continues to our day, as the maps of the Balkans, Africa, and the Middle East attest. What happened to the hopes of the world for justice and self-determination when they met at that table with the competing demands of new and old nationalisms? That is the stuff of Margaret MacMillan's award-winning study. Suzanne Toren's intuitive understanding of MacMillan's text raises her narration from mere reading to a new level of intimacy and immediacy. She is so in tune with the author's irony and nuance that it's difficult to believe we are only listening to history, not the author herself (great-granddaughter of Britain's David Lloyd George) recounting the events and personalities who met that spring and summer in Paris 1919. But history it is--and vital at that, if we are to understand how historic mistakes transform themselves later into world crises. P.E.F.
(c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine [Published: APR/MAY 04]