Adam Tooze is Barton M. Biggs Professor of History and Director of International Security Studies at Yale University. He taught for many years at the University of Cambridge. His last book, The Wages of Destruction, was universally acclaimed as one of the most important books written on the Third Reich. It was shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize and won both the Longman-History Today Book of the Year Prize and the Wolfson Prize for History.
Bold and ambitious ... probably the best of the current books about the First World War Observer A remarkable new synthesis which draws on [Tooze's] two particular areas of expertise, Eurasia and especially Germany, and the global financial system revolving around London ... the great strength of his book is that he invites us to look at familiar events in unfamiliar ways ... Tooze's account brims with contemporary resonances ... He is too good a historian, however, to turn this into a simple argument for Keynesian deficit financing ... the general public and policymakers alike will - must! - turn to Adam Tooze for instruction -- Brendan Simms Tablet It is particularly refreshing to read Adam Tooze's book ... it confirms his stature as an analyst of hugely complex political and economic issues ... Tooze's book covers a huge geographical sweep ... he shows himself a formidably impressive chronicler of a critical period of modern history, unafraid of bold judgements -- Max Hastings Sunday Times Adam Tooze's masterly book should be required reading for anyone who wants to truly understand the significance of the war ... Extensively researched and written with exemplary clarity, this work is as monumentally ambitious as its subject ... his powers of description and analysis range across all inhabited continents ... this is a valuable look at the ways in which the years after the war came to define the rest of the 20th century BBC History Magazine Interesting, engaging and very readable ... Underpinning this account is an impressive facility with numbers and an ability to analyse them that is increasingly rare among historians nowadays ... he has also delivered, for the first time, ...a clear and compelling rationale as to why it is actually worth going back and looking at the era of the First World War at this particular moment in time ... The Deluge reminds us, then, why we write history and why we should read it Literary Review Tooze made his name with The Wages of Destruction ... His study of the post-1918 era is equally impressive, explaining why the US and its allies, having defeated Germany, were unable to stabilize the world economy and build a collective security system in Europe -- Tony Barber Financial Times BOOKS OF THE YEAR