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Simon & Schuster has bought a new book from documentary film-maker and author David Reynolds on the legacy of the First World War.
Mike Jones, non-fiction editorial director, bought UK and Commonwealth rights to In the Long Shadow from Peter Robinson at Rogers Coleridge and White.
The book will be published in 2013. Reynolds looks at the differing impacts of the Great War on Britain, Ireland and the United States and argues that the UK is still recovering from the conflict.
Jones said: "David rides roughshod over many of the rather lazy assumptions about the First World War to create a bold and vivid history of its impact on the whole of the rest of the 20th century and indeed on our lives today. Stunningly broad in its historical perspective, The Long Shadow will be a magisterial and seismic re-presentation of the Great War."
Reynolds said: "In Britain we have lost touch with the Great War. Our overriding sense now is of a meaningless, futile bloodbath in the mud of Flanders—of young men whose lives were cut off in their prime for no evident purpose. But by reducing the conflict to personal tragedies, however moving, we have lost the big picture: the history has been distilled into poetry."
Reynolds won the Wolfson prize in 2004 for his book on Winston Churchill. His titles also include Summits and America: Empire of Liberty, a book and 90-part history of America for BBC Radio 4. He has also made documentary films and series for BBC2 and BBC4 on the Churchill and Attlee.