Free (nook/Kindle/Kobo/iTunes UK) Europe's Tragedy: Thirty Years War [1600s History]

[ATDrake]

Europe's Tragedy: A New History of the Thirty Years War by history professor Peter H. Wilson (University of Hull profile), provides a thoroughly comprehensive overview and analysis of Exactly What It Says In The Title, centred around the eponymous 17th century conflict (Wikipedia), free courtesy of publisher Penguin UK.

This is a lengthy and substantial book (~1000 print pages), lavishly illustrated with helpful maps and portraits and other useful items which help flesh out the who, what, and where, and has a good deal of praise from various UK newspaper outlets quoted in the editorial reviews section.

Currently free @ B&N UK, Amazon UK, iTunes UK, and Kobo (available to the UK and also in Ireland when I spot-check iTunes, but decidedly unfree in other countries around the world in their respective iTunes and Amazon stores, though YMMV). Probably also free @ Google Play UK (this seems to be the right URL since it looks like the exact same edition is sold worldwide).

This has a ~25 meg filesize which you may not want to download via 3G if you've data plan limits.

Unlikely to cross the pond in any direction, as our last batch of Penguin UK freebies didn't either.

And this has been the selected 3rd (non-repeat) free ebook thread of the day.

Because getting a substantial and well-received comprehensive history of one of the major and formative events in that part of the world written by an authority specializing in that place and time period is always a reason to

Enjoy!

Description
The horrific series of conflicts known as the Thirty Years War (1618-48) tore the heart out of Europe, killing perhaps a quarter of all Germans and laying waste to whole areas of Central Europe to such a degree that many towns and regions never recovered. All the major European powers apart from Russia were heavily involved and, while each country started out with rational war aims, the fighting rapidly spiralled out of control, with great battles giving way to marauding bands of starving soldiers spreading plague and murder. The war was both a religious and a political one and it was this tangle of motives that made it impossible to stop. Whether motivated by idealism or cynicism, everyone drawn into the conflict was destroyed by it. At its end a recognizably modern Europe had been created but at a terrible price.

Peter Wilson's book is a major work, the first new history of the war in a generation, and a fascinating, brilliantly written attempt to explain a compelling series of events. Wilson's great strength is in allowing the reader to understand the tragedy of mixed motives that allowed rulers to gamble their countries' future with such horrifying results. The principal actors in the drama (Wallenstein, Ferdinand II, Gustavus Adolphus, Richelieu) are all here, but so is the experience of the ordinary soldiers and civilians, desperately trying to stay alive under impossible circumstances.

The extraordinary narrative of the war haunted Europe's leaders into the twentieth century (comparisons with 1939-45 were entirely appropriate) and modern Europe cannot be understood without reference to this dreadful conflict.

[Apache]

Thank you. I picked it up from Amazon UK>
Apache

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

Europe's Tragedy: A New History of the Thirty Years War by history professor Peter H. Wilson

[Etc., etc., etc.]

A partial update to your awesome find . . . . It is still not free in the U.S. at Amazon. It is emphatically not free at Kobo in the U.S., anymore--it is around $26, if I remember correctly. It's not free at Google Play in the U.S.

So, it looks like I won't be getting a copy this go-around, although I didn't check B&N or iTunes U.S. (I detest iTunes, that's the reason for skipping them).

Oh, if only I could be British. ha.