'Gripping . . . An amazingly audacious and completely innovative way of writing history' WILLIAM BOYD

An enthralling narrative history with an international cast of characters that captures this definitive period after the close of the Great War.

Lenin and Hitler, Einstein and Hemingway, Josephine Baker and Rosa Luxemburg, Marcus Garvey and Mustafa Kemal: key players and participants in a world on the cusp of modernity, at a moment when anything seemed possible.

As the First World War reaches its awful climax, a shockwave of creative destruction is released. Europe is torn apart by revolution. America is in flames. A deadly pandemic stalks the globe. The curtain rises on a dangerous and exciting new era not unlike our own: of populists and prophets, freedom fighters and fascists, radical new ideas and clashing ideologies contesting an uncertain future.

Crucible is the collective diary of this era, filled with vaulting dreams, dark fears, grubby ambitions and the absurdities of chance. Encompassing both tragedy and humour, it brings immediacy and intimacy to a moment of deep historical transformation - with consequences that echo down to today.

'Dazzling . . . A compelling patchwork depiction of an era' TLS

'This buoyant study of life after the Great War illuminates the part that chance plays in history' Observer

Ricochets the reader around the globe, providing a visceral sense of the power and pace of the whirlwind that in the wake the Great War birthed the world as we know it. The result is a kaleidoscopic portrait, brilliantly curated and elegantly executed, of a world on the cusp of modernity * Wade Davis, author of Into the Silence *
A remarkable book… An amazingly audacious and completely innovative way of writing history … immediate and gripping -- William Boyd
An ambitious, original, seductive and important work -- Robert Gildea
Brings this extraordinary time to life with great vividness by evoking key moments from the daily lives of a dazzling variety of people -- Adam Hochschild
Emmerson skilfully tells the story of this lingering end to the Great War and Europe’s subsequent and dramatic transformation * History of War *
Emmerson… vividly bring[s] out…the sheer unpredictability of events, the role of personality and pure chance…that lay behind the tidier narrative which…we label ‘history’ -- David Crane * Literary Review *
In its intimate details and its grand overviews, Crucible is a compelling patchwork depiction of an era -- Lucy Hughes-Hallett * Times Literary Supplement *
The fragmented form of Crucible matches its content… Though never formless, Emmerson’s book dramatises that variegated chaos, dodging to and fro across the globe and veering between tragedy and farce, high politics and low culture -- Peter Conrad * Observer *
Writing in the present tense, the author hops and skips around the capitals of Europe…giving us short, erudite and often colourful snatches of the lives of a series of individuals which when taken together describe the crucible in which the world is changed -- Wynn Weldon * Spectator *
Crucible… somehow metastasises into one’s consciousness… The reader is…thrown raw, wet entrails and left to divine them. It’s unsettling, entertaining, aggravating and intriguing -- Gerard DeGroot * The Times *

CHARLES EMMERSON is an Australian-born writer and historian. He studied modern history at Oxford University and international relations in Paris. He is the author of The Future History of the Arctic and 1913: The World Before the Great War. He lives in London.