SOURCE: “The Second Fall,” in National Review, July 12, 1999, pp. 50-1.

In the following excerpt, Gress offers a positive assessment of The Pity of War but notes shortcomings in Ferguson's counterfactual approach.

The late political philosopher Sidney Hook, though a staunch atheist, referred to the outbreak of World War I as “the second fall of man.” The phrasing reflected the profound sense, held by nearly all true democrats who witnessed the effects of that war, that the conflict marked a vast, ominous, and tragic diversion of the course of human history. Before 1914, the liberal principles of free trade, expanding suffrage, and increasing prosperity seemed firmly anchored in not merely the official policies of the great powers, but the very identity and confidence of the peoples of Europe and North America. After 1918, by contrast, Europe sank into stagnation, protectionism, ferocious ideological conflicts, and ultimately a second great war, and the...