2009 Mark Lynton History Prize Finalist
William I. Hitchcock
The Bitter Road to Freedom: A New History of the Liberation of Europe (Free Press)
Judges’ Citation
In The Bitter Road to Freedom, William Hitchcock adds a rich new level of understanding to the very concept of military victory, showing the reasons the liberated themselves, from France to Poland, often celebrated their liberation with a deep alloy of bitterness and ambiguity. In this elegantly written and nuanced new history, Hitchcock doesn't challenge the moral necessity of the allied war against Nazi Germany, but he demonstrates with numerous moving and even shattering examples, the cost both physical and psychic to the civilians who in other respects benefitted from the allied effort. His book adds enormously to our understanding of the true nature of war, and has immediate relevance today, when we as a society need to measure the benefits of using military force to rescue people from disastrous situations against the inevitable pain and suffering that such a rescue will inevitably entail.
Bio
William I. Hitchcock is Professor of History at Temple University in Philadelphia. He received his B.A. from Kenyon College in 1986, where he studied history and French literature, and earned his Ph.D. in history from Yale University in 1994. He taught at Yale for six years and won a teaching prize there. He has lived overseas in Japan, France, Belgium, and Israel. Hitchcock is the author of France Restored: Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Leadership in Europe and The Struggle For Europe: The Turbulent History a Divided Continent, 1945-present. He lives in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania with his wife, the historian Elizabeth R. Varon, and their two children.
Judges for the Mark Lynton History Prize
Richard Bernstein, Maya Jasanoff, and Patrick Keefe.