An absorbing history of the outbreak of World War I from a true insider’s point of view, the first volume of Sir Winston Churchill’s five-volume The World Crisis is unsurpassed as both a historical and personal account of the earth-shaking events leading up to World War I. Beginning in 1911, when Churchill was First Lord of the Admiralty, this report is based on thousands of his personal letters and memos.

This first volume of Churchill’s epic series opens with a chilling description of the Agadir Crisis, and provides an in-depth account of naval clashes in the Dardanelles, one of Churchill’s major military failures. It takes readers from the fierce bloodshed of the Gallipoli campaign to the tragic sinking of the Lusitania and the tide-turning battles of Jutland and Verdun—as well as the USA’s entry into the combat theatre. Written in epic, powerful prose, Churchill provides a perspective you won’t find anywhere else: a dynamic insider’s account of events that would shape the outcome of modern history.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sir Winston Churchill was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953 “for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values.”
Over a 64-year span, Churchill published over 40 books, many multi-volume definitive accounts of historical events to which he was a witness and participant. All are beautifully written and as accessible and relevant today as when first published.
During his fifty-year political career, Churchill served twice as Prime Minister in addition to other prominent positions—including President of the Board of Trade, First Lord of the Admiralty, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Home Secretary. In the 1930s, Churchill was one of the first to recognize the danger of the rising Nazi power in Germany and to campaign for rearmament in Britain. His leadership and inspired broadcasts and speeches during World War II helped strengthen British resistance to Adolf Hitler—and played an important part in the Allies’ eventual triumph.
One of the most inspiring wartime leaders of modern history, Churchill was also an orator, a historian, a journalist, and an artist. All of these aspects of Churchill are fully represented in this collection of his works.
ABOUT THE SERIES

Rarely are events that change the world documented by a key participant, someone who was instrumental in making the military and political decisions that would shape the outcome of a world war. Winston Churchill’s The World Crisis provides the ultimate insider account—of a war intended to end all wars, a war so violent it almost undid the West altogether.

The World Crisis provides a sweeping narrative of the events of World War I that is both gripping and historically detailed—based on thousands of private letters and memos written to and by Churchill at the time. Nowhere else is the effect of this war so well conveyed by an eyewitness and historian—and so compellingly written.