8.2 /10 1 Votes
Originally published 6 September 2001 Genre Non-fiction | 4.1/5 Goodreads | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Awards Baillie Gifford Prize Similar Margaret MacMillan books, Non-fiction books, World War I books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Peacemakers: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War (2001) is a historical narrative about the events of the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. It was written by the Canadian historian Margaret MacMillan with a foreword by American diplomat Richard Holbrooke. The book has also been published under the titles Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World and Peacemakers: Six Months That Changed the World.
Contents
Peacemakers describes the six months of negotiations that took place in Paris, France following World War I. The book focuses on the "Big Three", photographed together on its cover (left to right): Prime Minister David Lloyd George of the United Kingdom, Premier Georges Clemenceau of France, and President Woodrow Wilson of the United States.
The book argues that the conditions imposed on Germany in the Treaty of Versailles did not lead to the rise of Adolf Hitler, asking the question: Was the Great War "an unmitigated catastrophe in a sea of mud", or "about something", and concluding "It is condescending and wrong to think they were hoodwinked."
British World War I Prime Minister David Lloyd George is the author's great-grandfather.
Reception
The book was first published in Britain. It has won the £5,000 Duff Cooper Prize for an outstanding literary work in the field of history, biography or politics, the £3,000 Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History, the prestigious BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for the best work of non-fiction published in the United Kingdom and the 2003 Governor General's Literary Award in Canada.
The book has been adapted as a 2009 docudrama film entitled "Paris 1919," by Paul Cowan, produced by the National Film Board of Canada. MacMillan recorded a related series of fourteen lectures for the audiobook Six Months That Changed the World: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 (Recorded Books, The Modern Scholar series, 2003).