The Deluge

The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931

By: Adam Tooze

Narrated by: Ralph Lister

In the depths of the Great War, with millions dead and no imaginable end to the conflict, societies around the world began to buckle. The heart of the financial system shifted from London to New York. The infinite demands for men and materiel reached into countries far from the front. The strain of the war ravaged all economic and political assumptions, bringing unheard-of changes in the social and industrial order. A century after the outbreak of fighting, Adam Tooze revisits this seismic moment in history, challenging the existing narrative of the war, its peace, and its aftereffects. From the day the United States enters the war in 1917 to the precipice of global financial ruin, Tooze delineates the world remade by American economic and military power.

Tracing the ways in which countries came to terms with America's centrality - including the slide into fascism - The Deluge is a chilling work of great originality that will fundamentally change how we view the legacy of World War I.

©2014 Adam Tooze (P)2014 Tantor

Critic reviews

"Tooze's grand economic history is stimulating, persuasive, and surprisingly accessible." ( Publishers Weekly)

Extremely interesting and useful.

I really learned a lot about an era I knew quite a bit about so totally worth it.

Dense...really dense

This book is really dense in terms of topics and I needed a bit more hand holding at times in terms of background. But in my mind if you are interested in this topic, it will definitely get you the info you need. I guess I just needed a bit more of an "Economics and Politics of WWI for Dummies" type book. But that won't stop me from reading Tooze's book on the financial crisis.

Nice book

Good recording. Hime good read book. Yes. Very good. Oh buddy. Hi mommy. What? Is

Very interesting but also very Keynesian

The economic analysis focuses mostly on credit markets and seem to forget that real resourses where destroyed in the war.
otherwise Great

brilliant and irreplaceable

this book makes you feel like you have been on the edge of your seat for the entire 30 year. From 1914 to the end of World War II, and like you understand everything that has happened since. if clausewitz had had training as an economist, he would rather have written this book.

Not For The Faint of Heart

This is serious discussion of post ww1 economics that helps explain the progression of German, Japan and Russia to high levels of military power prior to ww2. It identifies economic policies and the decisions that opened the way for eventual conflict. However, none of that predicted Hitler. And Frances reluctance to oppose Hitler in the Rhineland is not discussed at all, even though France showed no such reluctance to fully occupy The Rhineland to enforce reparations earlier and that is discussed at length.

I recommend this to patient, curious readers.

Made me reconsider everything I knew about WW1

The unabridged version is the better version. That the book was as focused on resterners as much as the westerners made it that much more enjoyable. Fantastic read

Excellent study of the period

There was very little that was brand new in this narrative, but it is one of the very best synthesis I have ever read on the period. I would recommend this book to any one studying or interested in the interwar period. It provides an understanding and layout of the dynamics of international affairs as the world began its slide into the diplomacy of the 1930s. It is the single best volume on this period.

Important view

How the world of the 20th century evolved in the 1920s and the depression was created by the actions and errors of the governments involved.

A Very Wide View

The Deluge is an incredibly, almost overwhelmingly expansive tour of the geo-economic-political world map towards the end of WW1 and into the Global Depression. Tooze provides powerful context to world events with narrative detail that will satisfy anyone. For it’s amazing achievements it also is perhaps a bit too wide of a view into the era. While some characters like Lloyd George and Stresemann have enough page time to exist as full characters, the side detours into Middle Eastern and Asian politics felt well researched but leave some major world figures as shadows. That all being said, it’s economy is admirable given the ambition of the bite.