About this item
A top literary historian illuminates how books were used in war across the twentieth century - both as weapons and as agents for peace We tend not to talk about books and war in the same breath - one ranks among humanity's greatest inventions, the other among its most terrible. But as esteemed literary historian Andrew Pettegree demonstrates, the two are deeply intertwined. The Book at War explores the various roles that books have played in conflicts throughout the globe. Winston Churchill used a travel guide to plan the invasion of Norway, lonely families turned to libraries while their loved ones were fighting in the trenches, and during the Cold War both sides used books to spread their visions of how the world should be run. As solace or instruction manual, as critique or propaganda, books have shaped modern military history - for both good and ill.
About the Author
I began my career working on aspects of the European Reformation. My first book was a study of religious refugee communities in the sixteenth century, and since then I have published on the Dutch Revolt, and on the Reformation in Germany, France and England, as well as a general survey history of the sixteenth century. In the last years the focus of my research has shifted towards an interest in the history of communication, and especially the history of the book. I run a research group that in 2011 completed a survey of all books published before1601: the Universal Short Title Catalogue. This work continues with work to incorporate new discoveries and continue the survey into the seventeenth century. In 2010 I published an award-winning study of The Book in the Renaissance, and in 2014 The Invention of News: a study of the birth of a commercial culture of news publication in the four centuries between 1400 and 1800. I return to the Reformation for a study of Luther's media strategy, published in 2015 by Penguin as Brand Luther, 1517, Printing and the Making of the Reformation. I am now engaged in a study of the book world of the seventeenth century Dutch Republic, to be published in 2019 as Trading Books in the Age of Rembrandt. I am the lead editor of two monograph series: the St Andrews Studies in Reformation History, and The Library of the Written Word. In 2012-2015 I served a three year term as Vice-President of the Royal Historical Society. I welcome enquiries from potential postgraduate students working on any aspect of the Reformation or Book History.
