Cascoly - Amazon BooksWorld War I |
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| The Oxford Companion to World War I.. | |
The First World War The latest of Keegan's book, this one brings the same wonderful combination of enormous research and clear and powerful writing. His description of the events leading up to the outbreak of war are excellent. This book provides the perfect foil to The Pity of War, and I read them both together.
From Publishers Weekly
In a riveting narrative that puts diaries, letters and action reports to
good use, British military historian Keegan (The Face of Battle, etc.)
delivers a stunningly vivid history of the Great War. He is equally at
easeAand equally generous and sympatheticAprobing the hearts and minds
of lowly soldiers in the trenches or examining the thoughts and
motivations of leaders (such as Joffre, Haig and Hindenburg) who
directed the maelstrom. In the end, Keegan leaves us with a brilliant,
panoramic portrait of an epic struggle that was at once noble and
futile, world-shaking and pathetic. The war was unnecessary, Keegan
writes, because the train of events that led to it could have been
derailed at any time, "had prudence or common goodwill found a voice."
And it was tragic, consigning 10 million to their graves, destroying
"the benevolent and optimistic culture" of Europe and sowing the seeds
of WWII. While Niall Ferguson's The Pity of War (Forecasts, Mar. 8)
offers a revisionist, economic interpretation of the causes of WWI,
Keegan stands impressively mute before the unanswerable question he
poses: "Why did a prosperous continent, at the height of its success as
a source and agent of global wealth and power and at one of the peaks of
its intellectual and cultural achievement, choose to risk all it had won
for itself and all it offered to the world in the lottery of a vicious
and local internecine conflict?"
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Eye-Deep in Hell: Trench Warfare in World War I- John Ellis - Millions of men lived in the trenches during World War I. More than six million died there. In Eye-Deep in Hell, the author explores this unique and terrifying world--the rituals of battle, the habits of daily life, and the constant struggle of men to find meaning amid excruciating boredom and the specter of impending death. | |
The Pity of War Rather than trying to cover the entire war, this book focuses on various problems, myths and misconceptions about the war. No matter what your previous views on the history of this era, this book is guaranteed to annoy, rattle and inspire you -- he has something to offend everyone's favorite theory, from left to right. Even when you don't accept his sometimes questionable conclusions, the process of getting there is well worth it.
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Memoirs of an Infantry Officer - Siegfried Sassoon - A celebrated poet who discovered pacifism in the WWI trenches
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Fiction
One of the most remarkable series in recent years, Barker tells the story of shell shocked patients in a British mental hospital during World War I. Based on real people like Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves, the novels are exceptionally well written and thought provoking. Night Thoughts of a Classical Physicist |
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