A gripping history of the First World War's longest and most terrible siege.
Alexander Watson is the author of the prize-winning history of the Central Powers in the First World War, Ring of Steel. He is Professor of History at Goldsmiths, University of London.
The vividly written and well-researched The Fortress is a
masterpiece. It deserves to become a classic of military
history.
*The Times*
If you read one military history book this year, make it Alexander
Watson's The Fortress.
*Tony Barber, Financial Times Summer Books of 2020*
Superb, revelatory, haunting ... he brings the suffocating,
cataclysmic siege burningly alive ... It is excellent history, a
marvellously readable, though tragic, story of its time and of how
the clock can be made to turn backwards under siege conditions.
*Daily Telegraph*
Alexander Watson tells this story beautifully, giving the reader a
vivid sense of the city ... His exposure of the breathtaking
incompetence of the Austrian high command is both shocking and
hilarious; his wit and keen sense of the ridiculous alternate with
his evident compassion in describing this black farce ... This is a
hugely enjoyable book that anyone seeking to make sense of the dark
side of 20th-century Europe would do well to read.
*Literary Review*
Brilliantly researched and superbly written ... Pryzemysl offered a
bleak preview of what was coming: nationalism, anti-Semitism and a
whirlwind of hatred. Grim stuff, but magnificently done.
*BBC History Magazine*
Marvellous ... Watson uses the fortress city like a jeweller's
glass to show how war distorted and transformed the pre-war
civilian world ... Watson's splendid book combines great evocative
power (and flashes of sharp humour) with the ethical authority of
the best history writing.
*The Guardian*
Gripping ... Watson's book is an impressive telling of a story
almost entirely unknown, and it makes clear how much we have yet to
learn about the first world war away from the western front.
*Financial Times*
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