In the Fourth Year_ Anticipations of a World Peace by H. G. Wells AUDIOBOOK

H. G. Wells’s "In the Fourth Year: Anticipations of a World Peace" stands as both a contemporary reflection and a passionate treatise born from the turmoil of the First World War. Written in 1918, as the conflict neared its exhausted conclusion, Wells gathers the urgent hopes and grave anxieties of his age, channeling them into a clear-eyed analysis of the intellectual struggle between the realities of power politics and the emergent idealism for international concord.

The volume’s central concern—the creation of a League of Nations—is considered not as a distant utopia but as a present and necessary endeavor. Drawing on his background as a prolific thinker and commentator on social progress, Wells traces the evolution of the war’s rhetoric from the much-quoted "war to end war" toward the concrete, if still tentative, proposal of a league of free nations. He interrogates the challenges facing such a project, from entrenched habits of secrecy and ascendancy among statesmen to the difficulties of popular understanding and engagement.

Through measured prose, Wells weighs the moral and practical obstacles to a lasting peace, inviting readers into the energetic debates that raged across English and American intellectual circles at the time. His style, simultaneously visionary and pragmatic, reflects both the weight of historical experience and the coltish hopefulness that an organized world order might yet redeem the sacrifices of war. Thematically, the work is rich in its exploration of democracy, internationalism, and the delicate balance between sovereignty and collective action.

Listeners are afforded both an historical document and a work of political imagination, vivid in atmosphere and deeply resonant with the perennial quest for peace. The audiobook is compelling for those interested in twentieth-century history, political thought, or the ever-relevant problem of building lasting structures for peace among nations.

Audiobook time & format : 3h46m52s, OPUS, 178 Mo
Audiobook free extract time & format : 5m (see below to listen), WAV
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