Having studied the global power structure that came into place following the carnage of the First World War, British philosopher Bertrand Russel (1872 - 1970; Nobel Prize for Literature, 1950) was surprised to find that the most dominate nation left standing was not one of the European polities that had fought the war from start to finish - but rather the United States: a nation that had participated in only the last nineteen months of the war.
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From Amazon:
The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931