Patrick O. Cohrs is Professor of International History at the University of Florence. He was associate professor of history at Yale University, a fellow at Harvard University, and Alistair Horne Fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford. He is the author of the acclaimed The Unfinished Peace after World War I (Cambridge, 2006).

Contents; Acknowledgements; Abbreviations; List of maps; Introduction; Part I. Inevitable Descent into the Abyss?: The Wider Pre-History of the Great War. The Involution of International Politics at the Dawn of the "Long" 20th Century: 1. Peace through equilibrium. The 19th century's Vienna system - and its disintegration; 2. Transformation and corrosion. The turn towards power politics and global imperialist competition in the formative decades of the "long" 20th century; 3. The "ascent" of an exceptionalist world power. The American special path and ephemeral aspirations for an Atlantic order of empires; 4. Counterforces - and first visions of a novel transatlantic peace. Internationalist aspirations to overcome imperialist power politics before 1914; 5. The unavoidable war? Long and short roads to the catastrophe of 1914; Part II. The Greatest War - and No Peace Without Victory: The Impact of the First World War, Competing Visions of Peace and the Struggle over the Shape of a New - Atlantic - World Order: 6. Tectonic changes. The consequences of the war and the transformation of the transatlantic constellation; 7. The political and ideological "war within the war". The transatlantic competition over the shape of the postwar order; 8. No "peace without victory" - and the making of the frail Atlantic armistice of November 1918; 9. No prospects for a lasting peace? The urgent and the systemic challenges of peacemaking and the need for a new Atlantic order; Part III. Reorientations and Incipient Learning Processes: The Dominant - Atlantic - Approaches to Peace and Order after the Great War: 10. Towards a progressive Atlantic peace of the victors. The reorientation of American approaches to peace and international order; 11. The search for a new equilibrium - and an Atlantic concert. The reorientation of British approaches to peace and international order; 12. The search for security and an Atlantic alliance of the victors. The reorientation of French approaches to peace and international order; 13. A new beginning? German pursuits of a Wilsonian "peace of justice" and first steps towards an Atlanticist foreign policy; Part IV. No "Pax Atlantica": The First Attempt to Found a Modern Atlantic Order - and its Frustration: 14. An impossible peace? The incomplete transatlantic peacemaking process of 1919; 15. Novel superstructure of a new Atlantic order? The struggle to found the League of Nations and the limitations of the covenant of 1919; 16. No just peace without security. The pivotal German settlement and the struggle to found a new Atlantic security system; 17. The eastern frontiers - and limits - of the new order. Self-determination, the critical Polish-German question and the wider challenges of "reorganising" Eastern Europe; 18. A formative threat? The Western powers and the Bolshevik challenge; 19. The political and moral stakes of reparations - and the limited advances towards a new Atlantic economic order; 20. The imposed peace. The missed opportunity of a negotiated settlement with Germany?; 21. The truncated Atlantic peace order of 1919 - a re-appraisal; Part V. Epilogue: The Political Consequences of the Peace: The Challenges after Versailles and the Making of the Unfinished Atlantic Peace of the 1920s: 22. Peace undermined. The divergent outlooks of the victors, the consequences of Wilson's defeat and the escalation of Europe's postwar crisis; 23. Towards a new order. Constructive learning processes and the construction of an Atlantic peace beyond Versailles; 24. The remarkable consolidation of the nascent Pax Atlantica of the 1920s - and its dissolution under the impact of the world economic crisis; Part VI. Final Perspectives - the Cadmeian Peace: 25. The eventual creation of the "long" 20th century's Atlantic order after 1945 and the crucial lessons of the era of the First World War; Bibliography.