The author of this book (Asser) was a contemporary of King Alfred's and was brought to Wessex (Alfred's kingdom) in the ninth century as part of Alfred's plan to improve education and culture in Anglo-Saxon England. The text is highly readable and gives students an eyewitness account of Alfred's kingship: military successes and failures (esp. fighting the Vikings), advancement of English culture and education, consolidation of the seven kingdoms, and cultivation of Christian kingship in the Early Middle Ages. This kind of book is especially fun for students to read as it shows us "real history," including things such as Alfred's 20-year fight with some sort of intestinal disorder. We see Alfred as a man, not just an aloof, wooden figure that died long ago. This edition also includes maps, geneological charts of the Carolingian (i.e., "French") kings and the English kings up to Alfred, and a 29-page introduction by Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge, which provides excellent background on the period in which Alfred and Asser lived. Also included are excerpts from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which was begun in Alfred's reign, extracts of Alfred's own writings and translations, and miscellaneous primary sources such as letters, books, and documents of the era. These items make good backgrounding for teachers. When this biography is read together with the Arthurian legend, it helps students to compare the real and the ideal kings of the Middle Ages.

There was a pronounced sense amongst many British, let alone Germans that the Versailles treaty was overly vindictive and would only serve to sow the seeds of the next great conflict. At the end of 1919 J M Keynes published 'The economic consequences of the peace' . He took great pains to point out the folly of the French position at the conference, namely to be as extreme as possible, cognisant of the fact that their claims would be moderated and noted that in several cases where the British and US delegations had no specific interest, provisions were passed 'on the nod' which even the French would not have subscribed to. Keynes was damning about both Clemenceau and Wilson and pointed out that almost everything had been done which 'might impoverish Germany now or obstruct her development in future' and that to demand such colossal reparations without any real notion of whether Germany had the means to pay was foolhardy in the extreme. Keynes book provided a fulcrum for British doubt about the treaty and an avenue for British sympathy with the fledgling German Republic. Keynes made treaty revision a thing of morality and enlightened self interest to avoid 'sowing the decay of the whole of civilised life of Europe'.

The Economic Consequences of the Peace was written in 1920 by Keynes, who was not already recognized as the most influential economist of the 20th century, a condition he would only attain when he wrote his famous General Theory some years later, and can be interpreted as a personal outburst against the heads of state of the four countries who participated in the Group of Four (France, Italy, UK and the USA) and decided the fate not only of the defeated countries (Germany and Austria) but also of the whole world, in a way that Keynes was adamantly against and which led to his resignation of his capacity of an important negotiator in the British delegation. One has also to remember that Keynes had always been against the war and lost some important friends in the conflict.

The portrait he gives of the different negotiating abilities of French's Clemenceau, United States' president Wilson and British Prime Minister Lloyd George is a devastating picture of the different motives each one of them had at the time: the aim of Clemenceau was to exact revenge to French's traditional enemy and to debilitate Germany as much as possible, thus postponing her return to prosperity and to menace again France. WIlson's, portrayed as a good man but lacking any negotiating feature a man of his stature should have, was a frail man only to save his face in the moral stances he took in his preliminary 14 points Armistice proposal, which led to the initial surrender of the Germans to the Allied forces. The British Lloyd George was only worried about upcoming elections in his country and was playing all the cards (good or bad) he had to save himself from an humiliating defeat to the Liberals.

The outcome of it all was a Peace Treaty who despised each and every point of reality, representing a burden Germany would not be able to pay, thus leading to the dismantling of an economic European system that led famine, social disturbance and finally to the World War II.

The book is a best-seller ever since and very easy to read and should be also recommended to every one interested in the power broker skills one has to have to succeed (Clemenceau) or fail (Wilson) in negotiation as hard as this one.

Great British economist John Maynard Keynes second book recounts his assessment of the economic consequences of the Treaty of Versailles, where he was a member of British delegation as an economic expert.
Keynes starts with providing a dazzling psychological analysis on how the treaty came to be.
"When President Wilson left Washinghton he enjoyed a prestige and a moral influence throughout the world unequalled in history ... Never had a philosopher help such weapons wherewith to bind the princes of this world. How the crowds of the European capitals presses about the carriage of the President! With what curiosity, anxiety, and hope we sought a glimpse of the features and bearing of the man of destiny who, coming from the West, was to bring healing to the wounds of the ancient parent of this civilization and lay for us the foundations and the future"
Alas, this was not to be. American idealism, French quest for security and British distaste for alliances and hypocrisy created an unworkable solution. Soul of the treaty was sacrificed to placate domestic political process, and as the result put Germany in the position of defiance and economic insolvency; the position which at the bottom drew sympathy from the former Allies and as the result contributed to brutality of the second conflict.
Keynes draws a picture of pan-European economy which was destroyed by the treaty and rightfully predicted that not only Germany will not be able to pay, but will be obligated to pursue the expansionist policy at the expense of her weak Eastern neighbors. Treaty did not contain any positive economic programme for rehabilitation of the economic life of Central powers and Russia. One just could not disrupt the economic position of the greatest European land power, at the same time strengthening it geo-politically and suffer no horrible retribution. ""The Peace Treaty of Versailles: This is not Peace. It is an Armistice
for twenty years." - said Foch about such a agreement.