1917: Lenin, Wilson, and the Birth of the New World Disorder
Written by Arthur Herman
Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki
4.5/5
()
About this audiobook
This is the story of two men, and the two decisions, that transformed world history in a single tumultuous year, 1917: Wilson’s entry into World War One and Lenin’s Bolshevik Revolution.
In April 1917 Woodrow Wilson, champion of American democracy but also segregation; advocate for free trade and a new world order based on freedom and justice; thrust the United States into World War One in order to make the “world safe for democracy”—only to see his dreams for a liberal international system dissolve into chaos, bloodshed, and betrayal.
That October Vladimir Lenin, communist revolutionary and advocate for class war and “dictatorship of the proletariat,” would overthrow Russia’s earlier democratic revolution that had toppled the all-power Czar, all in the name of liberating humanity—and instead would set up the most repressive totalitarian regime in history, the Soviet Union.
In this incisive, fast-paced history, New York Times bestselling author Arthur Herman brilliantly reveals how Lenin and Wilson rewrote the rules of modern geopolitics. Through the end of World War I, countries only marched into war to increase or protect their national interests. After World War I, countries began going to war over ideas. Together Lenin and Wilson unleashed the disruptive ideologies that would sweep the world, from nationalism and globalism to Communism and terrorism, and that continue to shape our world today.
Our New World Disorder is the legacy left by Wilson and Lenin, and their visions of the perfectibility of man. One hundred years later, we still sit on the powder keg they first set the detonator to, through war and revolution.
Arthur Herman
ARTHUR HERMAN is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and the author of nine books, including the New York Times bestseller How the Scots Invented the Modern World and Gandhi and Churchill, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He lives in Washington, DC.
More audiobooks from Arthur Herman
The Viking Heart: How Scandinavians Conquered the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Freedom's Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTo Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Changed the Modern World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gandhi & Churchill: The Epic Rivalry That Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Joseph McCarthy: Re-Examining the Life and Legacy of America's Most Hated Senator Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to 1917
Related audiobooks
The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Spectre of War: International Communism and the Origins of World War II Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The First World War: A Complete History Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/51939: Countdown to War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Case White: The Invasion of Poland 1939 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An Iron Wind: Europe Under Hitler Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5When France Fell: The Vichy Crisis and the Fate of the Anglo-American Alliance Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Devil's Diary: Alfred Rosenberg and the Stolen Secrets of the Third Reich Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fall of Berlin 1945 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Retribution: The Soviet Reconquest of Central Ukraine, 1943-44 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Instrument of War: The German Army 1914–18 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Revolution 1989: The Fall of the Soviet Empire Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Russian Revolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Russia: The Story of War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928-1941 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Days that Shook the World Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Stalin as Revolutionary 1879-1929: A Study in History and Personality Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Stalin: Passage to Revolution Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Empire Must Die: Russia's Revolutionary Collapse, 1900 - 1917 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Kremlin Letters: Stalin's Wartime Correspondence with Churchill and Roosevelt Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Marshall Plan: Dawn of the Cold War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Collapse of the Soviet Union: The History of the USSR Under Mikhail Gorbachev Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Stalin and the Fate of Europe: The Postwar Struggle for Sovereignty Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Political Biographies For You
Benjamin Franklin: An American Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination that Changed America Forever Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Watergate Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Benjamin Franklin Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Homegrown: Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Nazi Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5John Adams Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5To Rescue the Constitution: George Washington and the Fragile American Experiment Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Infidel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mornings on Horseback Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unhinged: An Insider's Account of the Trump White House Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The White House Plumbers: The Seven Weeks That Led to Watergate and Doomed Nixon's Presidency Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lincoln Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Five Presidents: My Extraordinary Journey with Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Enough Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Truman Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Trump Tapes: Bob Woodward's Twenty Interviews with President Donald Trump Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Rage Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Team of Rivals Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Peril Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5What Happened Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for 1917
59 ratings6 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A thoroughly neocon take on the Wilsonian Idealist era and the Life of Vladimir Lenin, however I feel that the authors subjects don’t nearly connect as much as they aught to have or at least could have in the body of the text itself.
For the next generation of Neoconservative apparatchiks, or those that want to study them, this is not a pointless volume to read or listen too, it informs more on the course of polemical history which grows out of works that tower over this one, namely Pipes, Service, Baker and Link. But to understand what sort of history the liberal right in America would want to write after its disastrous 3 decades at the helm of foreign policy leadership following the Cold War, look no further.
If you are, however, looking for the details of Allied Intervention in Russia’s Civil War and Revolution, or to understand the complexity of the foreign entanglements and disentanglements of the Entente and the February Revolution to the collapse of the Far Eastern Republic, this is sadly not the volume for it.
I got more entertainment for the liberal right historian milling over Wilson and his place in American history, condemning the area’s Wilson is to the right of him on (namely racialism) while trying to tie together the lose ends of the hostility towards the Idealism which was genesis of American involvement in global geopolitics with the complaints of realism with the slippery implications that the US must be a key player and arbiter in power dynamics of the other hemispheres. Whether or not Mr. Herman makes the case will depend, frankly, on your attitude to the Bush administration in hindsight.
As it stands I see this volume as more of a case study on the prognosis to world problems articulated by the most gifted of the educated Neoconservative elites using historical polemics to create a partisan historiography than a conclusive look at either men or their time through a dispassionate lense even if still through a modern conservative view.1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Whatever minute admiration I had for Woodrow Wilson has been erased by Mr. Herman's account of 1917, and it brings into sharper focus the danger we face today with leaders who are equally as arrogant as Wilson and like Lenin seem immune to human suffering.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Easy to follow, well-concieved, interesting topic. Not indepth on either man, but a good overview. Author had unmasked political leanings that I feel colored his treatment of topics that might be better seen through the eyes of a more politically-disinterested, historically-motivated author. But still enjoyed it.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I enjoyed listening to this book. Great behind the scenes information into world war 1 and how leaders made their decisions.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Great reader. The main thing the book did for me was to skillfully connect some dots in my head. From recent previous readings, I understood that what horrible damage Wilson did as “ President” as he declared his dead baby( the League) as living while he was actually dying. What, on earth, was his “ good Dr Grayson, thinking? Lodge was more masterful at his craft, even without TR, than I ever imagined.
This week in “ real time” we are facing some political games of similar nature. Whether the truth will prevail is doubtful. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Well written and well researched. I’m not smart enough to oppose any of his conclusions. I have long believed Wilson was a horrible president and this continued to put nails in his coffin for me.