Triumph and Tragedy: The Evolution and Legacy of 20th Century War Machines

The twentieth century was both the brightest period in the evolutionary journey of humankind and the darkest. Heir to four centuries of discovering what the mind can do, humanity used that growing awareness to virtually end the timeless cycles of famine and epidemics of disease, to invent and mass produce countless labor and lifesaving technologies, and to discover nature’s most intimate secrets. These are magnificent accomplishments. And yet, these same miraculous gifts were placed in the service of chauvinistic ambitions that twice plunged the world into paroxysms of death and destruction on unprecedented scales. This is the great enigma of human existence, its agony and its ecstasy.

Triumph and Tragedy traces the course of the scientific, industrial, and cultural revolutions that set the stage for humanity’s deadliest century. It describes the political movements that sponsored the development of a new generation of weapons enabled by the newly available technologies and how governments mobilized their populations to fight a new kind of war, one dominated by machines. Rare historical photographs bring the story to life and give the personalities a human face. The weapons themselves are shown in brooding, high-resolution detail in a gallery chapter with over a hundred of the author’s award-winning photographs, serving as reminder and metaphor of our brilliance and folly.