SOURCE: “In the Shadow of the Great War,” in The New York Review of Books, August 12, 1999, pp. 36-9.

In the following excerpt, Kennedy examines Ferguson's controversial arguments and conclusions in The Pity of War.

It is interesting but perhaps not surprising that, as this conflict-torn century nears its end, the shadows cast over it by the Great War of 1914–1918 seem in some ways longer, darker, and more daunting than ever before. For what that struggle meant and did changed the course of history more than any other in modern times, including its great successor war of 1939–1945. Consider only a few of the consequences of the Great War, offered here in no particular order. It brought the end of the Romanovs, the rise of the Bolsheviks, and the emergence of a Communist system that blighted so much of humanity for the rest of the century. The war also made...