"An epic exercise in historical speculation...Detailed and thought-provoking." Publishers Weekly
New York, NY (PRWEB) August 06, 2014
One hundred years ago this week, the Great War erupted in Europe. How America ultimately got into this war and why it was a catastrophic mistake is the tale told by Burton Yale Pines in "America’s Greatest Blunder: The Fateful Decision to Enter World War One."
This highly-praised book has just won the Pinnacle Book Achievement Award, sponsored by NABE (the National Association of Book Entrepreneurs). NABE has named "America’s Greatest Blunder" the “Best Book in U.S. History.” The Cottage Grove, OR, organization, which offers services to publishers, announced that “these awards have been given for more than 28 years and honor some of the finest independently-published books in a wide variety of fields.”
It is the twelfth award received by the Pines book. Earlier prizes include the eLit Awards’ Gold Medal (Current Events) and Silver Medal (History), International Book Awards’ Winner (Military History), Readers’ Favorite Annual Book Award’s Silver Medal, Independent Book Publisher Association’s “IPPY” Awards’ Silver Medal (U.S. History), USA Best Books Awards’ Winner (Military History), Paris Book Festival’s Runner-Up in General Non-Fiction and National Indie Excellence Awards’ Finalist (U.S. History).
Says Pines: “With the centenary of the war’s August 1914 outbreak, interest in World War One among all readers is mounting dramatically. And as recent tensions grow in Ukraine, the Middle East, the South China Sea and elsewhere, policymakers and analysts are looking to World War One as a cautionary example.”
The book’s provocative central argument is that America blundered greatly by entering a war that it had no reason to join. America’s millions of Doughboys broke the Western Front’s battlefield stalemate and won the war, thus allowing Britain and France to impose their draconian peace on Germany. Had America not entered the war, writes Pines, “there would have been a peace of compromise -- and thus no punishing Versailles peace treaty, no reparations, no humiliation of Germany, no German toxic calls for revenge and therefore no Hitler, no World War Two and likely no Cold War.” Concludes Pines: “It indeed was America’s greatest blunder of the 20th Century.”
Publisher Weekly calls "America’s Greatest Blunder" “An epic exercise in historical speculation...Detailed and thought-provoking” Kirkus Reviews says the book is a “A carefully and winningly argued case against military adventurism.” Foreword Clarion Reviews says the book is “a good primer for anyone who seeks to understand how a nation can be dragged into war.”
Availability
America’s Greatest Blunder is available in hardcover, paperback and e-formats at http://www.Amazon.com, http://www.BN.com, the Apple iBooks store, http://www.kobo.com and at bookstores.
The Author
Burton Yale Pines, a former University of Wisconsin (Madison) history instructor, Time Magazine correspondent and editor and onetime Washington think-tank executive, is the author of "Back to Basics" (1982) and "Out of Focus" (1993). He grew up in Chicago, attended Nicholas Senn High School and is a three-time winner of the New York Newspaper Guild’s “Page One Award for Excellence in Journalism.”
Contact
Burton Yale Pines
greatestblunder(at)gmail(dot)com
212-579-3180
The book’s Amazon page is at: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0989148734.
The book’s website is: http://www.AmericasGreatestBlunder.com.