They struggled with the problems of Kosovo, of the Kurds, and of a homeland for the Jews.

They pushed Russia to the sidelines, alienated China, and dismissed the Arabs. This book brings to life the personalities, ideals, and prejudices of the men who shaped the settlement. Ho Chi Minh, a kitchen assistant at the Ritz, submitted a petition for an independent Vietnam.įor six months, Paris was effectively the center of the world as the peacemakers carved up bankrupt empires and created new countries. Lawrence of Arabia joined the Arab delegation. David Lloyd George, the gregarious and wily British prime minister, brought Winston Churchill and John Maynard Keynes. Stern, intransigent, impatient when it came to security concerns and wildly idealistic in his dream of a League of Nations that would resolve all future conflict peacefully, Wilson is only one of the larger-than-life characters who fill the pages of this extraordinary book. Center stage, for the first time in history, was an American president, Woodrow Wilson, who with his Fourteen Points seemed to promise to so many people the fulfillment of their dreams. Brimming with lucid analysis, elegant character sketches, and geopolitical pathos, it is essential reading.'īetween January and July 1919, after 'the war to end all wars,' men and women from around the world converged on Paris to shape the peace. 'Without question, Margaret MacMillan's Paris 1919 is the most honest and engaging history ever written about those fateful months after World War I when the maps of Europe were redrawn.

Paris, 1919 by Margaret MacMillan