War Hecatomb. International Effects on Public Health, Demography and Mentalities in the 20th Century, offers new insights on the impact of wars (namely, but not exclusively, World War I), by underlining its social and psychological consequences, particularly in public health, demography, and mentalities in different countries. Therefore, it is not just another book on World Wars, since it does not focus primarily on political, diplomatic, military or economic aspects. Instead, the work offers a brand new approach on these wars' consequences, and especially on the civilizational significance of the Great War of 1914-1918. This original view over societies coping with the aftermath of the two world wars reveals how states and different agents were compelled to act and to face the new post-war reality, bringing to light an innovative social agenda while simultaneously trying to cope with the overwhelming phenomenon of physically and mentally scarred multitudes of veterans and their families. The book focuses on the consequences of conflicts in different perspectives and geographic locations. In twelve chapters, several aspects and effects of wars are analysed through different lens.
About the Author: Helena da Silva is an historian and a researcher at the Institute of Contemporary History of the NOVA University of Lisbon. She is currently responsible for the research project Medical and Healthcareservices in the First World War (IF/00631/2014/CP1221/CT0004). She has published several articles on health history, particularly about hospitals and the professionalization of nursing.
Paulo Teodoro de Matos is an historian, Assistant Professor at Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL). His main research activities are related to Historical Demography, Social History, and History of the Portuguese Expansion. He is the Principal Investigator of the research project Counting Colonial Populations. Demography and the uses of statistic in the Portuguese empire, 1776-1875.
José Miguel Sardica is an historian teaching at the School of Human Sciences and at the Institute for Political Studies of the Catholic University of Portugal, and member of its Research Center for Commu-nication and Culture. His research areas are the 19th and 20th century Portuguese and international history, in the political, institutional, cultural, and intellectual/media fields.
