
A gripping chronicle of the personal and political rivalries from the birth of Queen Victoria to the unification of Germany during the decades leading up to WW1 from Pulitzer Prize winner Robert K. Massie
2018 marks the centenary of the end of the First World War. How did it all begin?
With the biographer's rare genius for expressing the essence of extraordinary lives, Massie brings to life a crowd of glittering figures: the young, ambitious Winston Churchill; the ruthless, sycophantic Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow; Britain's greatest twentieth-century Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey; and Jacky Fisher, the eccentric admiral who revolutionised the British Navy and brought forth the battleship, H.M.S. Dreadnought. Their story, and the story of the era, filled with misunderstanding and tensions, missed opportunities, and events leading to unintended conclusions, unfolds like a Greek tragedy in this powerful narrative. Intimately human and dramatic, Dreadnought is history at its most riveting.
'History at its best, a fantastic mix of anecdote, observation and intelligent thinking' Dan Snow, Daily Express
Born in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1929, Robert K. Massie studied history at Yale University and Oxford University before embarking on" a highly successful career as writer and editor. Among the publications with which the author has been associated are Newsweek, USA-1, The Saturday Evening Post, The Reporter, Saturday Review, The New York Times Magazine, and The New York Times Book Review. Mr. Massie currently lives in Irvington, New York, with his wife and three children. The affliction of the author's young son by hemophilia inspired Mr. Massie's interest in the tragic drama of Nicholas and Alexandra, whose son also was stricken with the disease. This factor, as many reviewers have commented, gives this brilliant work an added dimension of human understanding rare in the writing of history.

A gripping chronicle of the personal and political rivalries from the birth of Queen Victoria to the unification of Germany during the decades leading up to WW1 from Pulitzer Prize winner Robert K. Massie
2018 marks the centenary of the end of the First World War. How did it all begin?
With the biographer's rare genius for expressing the essence of extraordinary lives, Massie brings to life a crowd of glittering figures: the young, ambitious Winston Churchill; the ruthless, sycophantic Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow; Britain's greatest twentieth-century Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey; and Jacky Fisher, the eccentric admiral who revolutionised the British Navy and brought forth the battleship, H.M.S. Dreadnought. Their story, and the story of the era, filled with misunderstanding and tensions, missed opportunities, and events leading to unintended conclusions, unfolds like a Greek tragedy in this powerful narrative. Intimately human and dramatic, Dreadnought is history at its most riveting.
'History at its best, a fantastic mix of anecdote, observation and intelligent thinking' Dan Snow, Daily Express
Born in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1929, Robert K. Massie studied history at Yale University and Oxford University before embarking on" a highly successful career as writer and editor. Among the publications with which the author has been associated are Newsweek, USA-1, The Saturday Evening Post, The Reporter, Saturday Review, The New York Times Magazine, and The New York Times Book Review. Mr. Massie currently lives in Irvington, New York, with his wife and three children. The affliction of the author's young son by hemophilia inspired Mr. Massie's interest in the tragic drama of Nicholas and Alexandra, whose son also was stricken with the disease. This factor, as many reviewers have commented, gives this brilliant work an added dimension of human understanding rare in the writing of history.