THE KILLING SEASON

An in-depth and exquisitely narrated account of the four-month-long First Battle of Ypres: set on the Western Front of France and Belgium, this battle would become one of the most important confrontations of World War I, as well as the most costly for Germany.

Beginning with the amazing string of German victories that opened the Great War, Cowley describes how the first trench lines came to be, and how they spread across, and sealed off, northern France and Belgium in just a month. As a result, the 470 miles from the North Sea to the Swiss border would be closed for the next four years. Time itself seemed to grind to a halt. And, inevitably, as both sides commenced their "Race to the Sea," all roads began to converge upon the once-thriving cloth trade center, Ypres. The First Battle of Ypres denied Germany a realistic hope of victory in the war, and that is its ultimate importance. But many of the events detailed in these pages have been so overlooked as to be almost unknown. THE KILLING SEASON is the product of more than thirty years of travel, research, and writing. Robert Cowley is an American military historian, who writes on topics in American and European military history ranging from the Civil War through World War II. He has held several senior positions in book and magazine publishing and is the founding editor of the award-winning MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History. Cowley has also written extensively and edited three collections of essays in counterfactual history known as What If? As part of his research he has traveled the entire length of the Western Front, from the North Sea to the Swiss Border. He currently lives in New York, Connecticut and Newport, Rhode Island.