‘Rich, authoritative, and highly readable … [a] tour de force’ David Kynaston
Chairman Mao was a librarian. Stalin was a published poet. Evelyn Waugh served as a commando – before leaving to write Brideshead Revisited. Since the advent of modern warfare, books have all too often found themselves on the frontline.
In The Book at War, acclaimed historian Andrew Pettegree traces the surprising ways in which written culture – from travel guides and scientific papers to Biggles and Anne Frank – has shaped, and been shaped, by the vast conflicts of the modern age.
From the American Civil War to the invasion of Ukraine, books, authors and readers have gone to war – and in the process become both deadly weapons and our most persuasive arguments for peace.
Sobre el autor
Andrew Pettegree, FBA, is one of the leading experts on Europe during the Reformation. He currently holds a professorship at St Andrews University where he is the director of the Universal Short Title Catalogue Project. He is the author of The Invention of News: How the World Came to Know About Itself (winner of the Goldsmith Prize) and Brand Luther: 1517, Printing and the making of the Reformation, among other publications.