“Robert Cowley brilliantly brings to light how underappreciated British, Belgian, and French heroism—amid the modern world’s introduction to the horrific concert of shrapnel-spewing artillery, repeating rifles, and machine guns—blocked the German advance to sea, and ensured that Germany could not win the war. Revisionist and original military history at its finest.”—Victor Davis Hanson, Senior Fellow, the Hoover Institution, Stanford University and New York Times bestselling author of The End of Everything
“Robert Cowley’s The Killing Season is a thrilling and compellingly readable account of the Battle of Ypres in October 1914, a pivotal moment which ended the war of movement and ushered in the four years of trench warfare which would cost millions of lives on both sides. . . . a magnificent, monumental achievement.”—Michael Korda, author of Muse of Fire
“Among military historians, nobody is better than Robert Cowley at breathing new life into long dead battles, demonstrating their true significance by presenting us with a host of key but never fully-considered factors. The Killing Season, the product of three decades of research, is a triumph of retrospection and reconsideration; but so well-written it’s easy to forget how much new ground is being broken. My advice is simple: Read This Book.”—Robert L. O’Connell, author of Revolutionary
“The Killing Season has all the elements of an epic. A bloody, consequential battle, a cast of heroic characters, taut writing, superb research, and an unputdownable story, all make Cowley’s a great book. It will stand as a classic of military history.”—Barry S. Strauss, author of The War that Made the Roman Empire
“This is 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 Vietnam
“Robert Cowley’s The Killing Season crackles with excitement as it revisits the opening salvos of World War One . . . 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 . . . All in all, a deeply moving book, that brings back one of the most important autumns of the 20th century, and offers a salutary warning in another time of sleepwalking.”—Ted Widmer, author of Lincoln on the Verge
