The World on Fire: 1919 and the Battle with Bolshevism | 
| Author: Anthony Read
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  6 reviews
Sales Rank: 393393
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.4 x 1.4
ISBN: 0393061248
Dewey Decimal Number: 909.821
EAN: 9780393061246
ASIN: 0393061248
Publication Date: March 17, 2008
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Condition: Brand new hardcover book with dustjacket. We ship daily. Expedited shipping and international shipping options are available. BCE
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Product Description
"We are running a race with Bolshevism and the world is on fire."—President Woodrow Wilson, 1919
While the Western leaders were hammering out a peace treaty in Paris to end the Great War, a new war had already begun. Bolshevism—the creed of the Russian Revolution—had burst on the scene in 1917 and seared itself into the world's consciousness even faster than al-Qaeda would some eighty years later. The Allied powers tried to destroy it at its source by intervening, controversially and unsuccessfully, in the civil war in Russia. Elsewhere there were bloody revolutions and bloodier counterrevolutions in Germany, Hungary, and the Baltic States; massive strikes and civil unrest broke out in Britain, Western Europe, and in both North and South America. In the United States, a series of terrorist bombings created a wave of hysteria, later labeled the Great Red Scare, that threatened the very foundations of a free and democratic society. This book chronicles and examines the running battle with terror during the most revolutionary year since 1789. 16 pages of illustrations.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 1 more reviews...
 Poorly written and false account by a historian better suited to children's works July 5, 2008
While I can surely appreciate a biased yet well-written account of the turbulent years of revolution after WW1, this one is very poorly written and researched.
The author writes mostly works for children and other non-historical works, and boy does it show!
As a serious sholar of Russian history, I found a multitude of falsehoods:
1) February revolution 1917-Read claims that the February revolution was not a revolution but merely the collapse of tsarism. Every historian knows that the collapse of tsarism only occurred because hundreds of thousands came into the streets and were willing to lie down their lives for democracy.
2) Rosa Luxemburg Her actions and deeds are terribly misrepresented here. She is categorized as a Bolshevik intent on replicating Soviet Russia. In fact, she was very seriously opposed to many methods of Lenin and the Bolsheviks. She was a determined revolutionary set on overthrowing Germany's republic but only by full support of the masses. Moreover, she was also clearly opposed to the foolhardy, premature efforts of Karl Liebknecht and his premature, unplanned eforts to foment revolution. However,she was unable to forestall events much like the Bolsheviks in July 1917.
3)The Brest-Litovsk treaty is portrayed as a shameful peace forced through by Lenin. On one page he claims that Trotsky was forced by lenin to vote for it. This is complete nonsense. All documentation and historian accounts record that Lenin was in a minority over supporting the peace. Only after, the party opted for Trotsky's no war-no-peace solution and this failed, did Trotsky(by prior consent with Lenin) change his vote. The vote in favor of the peace squeaked through my his 1 vote.
4) Invasion of British Embassy by Bolsheviks in 1918. Read makes this sound as some diabolical anti-Western, arbitrary gesture made by Lenin. In fact, Lockhart, British diplomat, was arrested for actively arming and supporting uprisings and assassinations. The embassy was raided to arest him. Surely no othergovernment inclusing US would tolerate this as well.
In terms of viewpoints, te author is so biased against anything socialist or Marxist, that he paints the Western governments as utterly righteous. In fact, they blockaded the Soviet Union fom receiving food or medicine, fomented revolt among the Czech armies.
In summary, anyone pro-Marxist or anti-marxist wishing to read a historian's account of events is recommended to stay away from this poorly documented, emotional account.
 Is It Possible? June 17, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
For a British book on the Russian Revolution and its international wake to be written by other than a crank Tory or Trotskyite? For the former you'll find scarcely better than this work By Anthony Read.
The author is a popularizer and childrens' writer, and it shows in the rigid moralism with which he (literally) attacks his subject. He writes of Bolshevik contempt for such "Western bourgeois niceties" as "truth, humanity, and honour," which fact may be true in itself but only puts Lenin and Trotsky in good company with Churchill and Clemenceau and Wilhelm II. In the name of Western Civilization these worthies tore Europe apart in the yet-worst war in human history, signed secret treaties disposing of other peoples' countries, and supported rearguard terrorism (Freikorps, Back & Tans) to keep their postwar remnants of "Western bourgeois niceties" intact. The affected condemnation of Bolshevik horrors struck many in 1918-19 as hollow and hypocritical coming from these worthies, even when the criticisms were factually true. The irony yet remains and is underscored unintentionally in Read's book.
I give it a second star, however, for its attention to sources and narratives. It will provide the general reader with a good introductory overview of this period - if s/he can avoid the moralistic sandtraps lining the author's course. Just be sure you're not paying full retail price for it! The best history of the early Bolshevik-era "Specter of Communism" haunting the post WWI-world is still David Mitchell's "1919: Red Mirage." Peter Hopkirk's "Setting the East Ablaze" is also good but focuses exclusively on Asia.
 "The Bolsheviks are coming"! June 9, 2008
This well-written book should be read in conjunction with "Savage Peace" by Ann Hagedorn, which I reviewed on June 28, 2007. They both offer insights into what was happening in the U.S. right after the end of World War I, and particularly the hysteria caused by the Russian Revolution. There are some of the same incidents in both books, but this latest one goes beyond happenings in the U.S., and gives us views of events in Europe, where the fear of a Communist take-over was much more reality-based. This was a very nervous time, and the author captures that feeling quite well. I learned many things that I did not know, not only about my own country, but about European events and countries. It only goes to show that one's education is never complete, particularly as it applies to history. I don't think that I will ever stop learning something new until I am, for one reason or another, unable to read anymore.
Should be fascinating but is ultimately very dull. June 3, 2008
There is a lot of valuable information in THE WORLD ON FIRE, but it's so poorly written that it deteriorates into a mass of interchangeable massacres.
I did not finish it. I'll read a better book on the pivotal year of 1919.
A Dull Chronology April 7, 2008
7 out of 12 found this review helpful
Read is not a professional historian and that much is obvious immediately upon taking up his new book. On the 2nd page he compares the world reaction to Bolshevism to that towards al-qaeda, a comparison that many may differ with and not to be made so fleetingly. The book mostly consists of a chronicle of events that took place immediately following the Bolshevik revolution. Unfortunately it concentrates solely on 1919, which has the twin effect of making it inconclusive, as many events rolled on for a few more years (the Russian civil war) and very dull. Even an anti-communist as myself finds his tone a little strident at times and I question some of his conclusions. The books generally lacks any theme or central theory; however it is useful as a reference of industrial actions that took place around the western world in 1919 following the end of WWI. Beyond that narrow point of reference I see no further value to this book.
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