Robert Cowley The Killing Season review, recensie en informatie boek over de eerste slag bij Ieper in 1914 tijdens de Eerste Wereldoorlog. Op 9 oktober 2025 verschijnt bij Osprey Publishin het boek van Robert Cowley, de schrijver autoriteit op het gebied van Amerikaanse en Europese militaire geschiedenis. Er is geen Nederlandse vertaling van het boek verkrijgbaar.

Robert Cowley The Killing Season review en recensie

• “A masterful and heartbreaking book … If you want to know how modern warfare began, The Killing Season is for you.” (Geoffrey C. Ward, co-author of The Civil War, The War, and The Vietnam War)
• “The Killing Season crackles with excitement. With a novelist’s eye for drama and a historian’s mastery of detail, Cowley delivers a powerfully immersive experience for the reader, viscerally conveying the sheer folly of a conflict that decimated Europe. . . . A deeply moving book that brings back one of the most important autumns of the twentieth century.” (Ted Widmer, author of Lincoln on the Verge)

The Killing Season

A New History of Autumn 1914

• Auteur: Robert Cowley (Verenigde Staten)
• Soort boek: oorlogsgeschiedenis, Eerste Wereldoorlog
• Taal: Engels
• Uitgever: Osprey Publishing
• Verschijnt: 9 oktober 2025
• Omvang: 480 pagina’s
• Uitgave: gebonden boek / ebook
• Prijs: £ 30,00 / £ 21,00
• Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Bol

Flaptekst van het boek over de slag bij Ieper in 1914

An in-depth, authoritative account of the autumn of 1914 on the Western Front and the First Battle of Ypres, a true turning point in modern warfare.

The final months of 1914 were the bloodiest interval in a famously bloody war, a killing season. They ended with the First Battle of Ypres, a struggle in West Flanders, Belgium, the importance of which has been too long over-looked – until now.

Robert Cowley’s account of this crucial period describes how German armies in France were poised to sweep north to capture the Channel ports and knock England out of the war – and were only held back by a brilliant improvisation from a cobbled-together handful of desperate British, French and Belgium troops.

In a re-examination of events that have too long seemed set in stone, Cowley combines a wide array of source materials with sharp portrayals both of military leaders and the men they lead. We follow Albert of Belgium, the world’s last warrior king; French General Ferdinand Foch, a former professor of military science; and Hendrik Geeraert, an alcoholic barge keeper, who pulled off Albert’s literal last-ditch effort. Many other memorable characters emerge, including Sir John French along with both a young Adolf Hitler and Winston Churchill.

The vast brawl of four armies in Flanders was a turning point that irrevocably changed the nature of modern warfare. In this visceral account, based on 30 years of research and picking up where Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August left off, Cowley details the crucial decisions that determined the outcome of the Great War – which may have been decided by a single, extraordinary afternoon.

Robert Cowley is an authority on American and European military history, whose writing spans the American Civil War to World War II. He has held several senior positions in book and magazine publishing and is the founding editor of the award-winning MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History. As part of his research he drove and walked the entire length of the Western Front. He lives in Newport, Rhode Island.

Bijpassende boeken

• Eerste Wereldoorlog
• Militaire geschiedenis