War of the world (Penguin Books)

Niall Ferguson's "The War of the World: History's Age of Hatred" re-tells the story of history's most savage century as a continual war that raged for 100 years. At the beginning of the twentieth century, globalizing, booming economies married to technological breakthroughs seemed to promise a better world for most people.

Instead, the 20th century proved to be overwhelmingly the most violent, frightening and brutalized in history with fanatical, often genocidal warfare engulfing most societies between the outbreak of the First World War and the end of the Cold War.

What turned it into a bloodbath? From the plains of Poland to the killing fields of Cambodia, Niall Ferguson reveals how economic boom-and-bust, decaying empires and - above all - poisonous ideas of race led men to treat each other as aliens.

It was an age of hatred that ended with the twilight, not the triumph, of the West. And, he warns, it could happen all over again. "A heartbreaking, serious and thoughtful survey of human evil that is utterly fascinating and dramatic".

(Simon Sebag Montefiore, "The New York Times"). "Unputdownable, controversial, compelling". ("Independent on Sunday")."A big, bold and brilliantly belligerent book". ("Sunday Telegraph").

"Hums with energy, quotable insights and pithy summaries". ("Observer"). "Gripping". (Tristram Hunt). Niall Ferguson is one of Britain's most renowned historians. He is Laurence A.

Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, a Senior Research Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford and a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is the bestselling author of "Paper and Iron", "The House of Rothschild", "The Pity of War", "The Cash Nexus", "Empire", "Colossus", "The War of the World" and "The Ascent of Money".