A World on Edge: The End of the Great War and the Dawn of a New Age

The story of the aftermath of World War I, a transformative time when a new world seemed possible--told from the vantage of people, famous and ordinary, who lived through the turmoil November 1918. The Great War has left Europe in ruins, but with the end of hostilities, a radical new start seems not only possible, but essential, even unavoidable. Unorthodox ideas light up the age: new politics, new societies, new art and culture, new thinking. The struggle to determine the future has begun. Sculptor K�the Kollwitz, whose son died in the war, is translating sorrow and loss into art. Captain Harry Truman is running a men's haberdashery in Kansas City, hardly expecting he will soon go bankrupt--and then become president of the United States. Moina Michael is about to invent the "remembrance poppy," a symbol of sacrifice that will stand for generations to come. Meanwhile Virginia Woolf is questioning whether that sacrifice was worth it, and George Grosz is so revolted by the violence on