The Great War

This book presents WW1 as the awful thing it really was. It covers the events leading up to the war and then its horrors: charging barbed wire fences and machine guns, being blown to pieces by artillery fire, "living" in filthy, lice-ridden, rat-infested, corpse-laden trenches in mud up to the knees. The many pictures helped one to appreciate war's true nature. The book was a tribute to the men who fought and a terrible indictment of those who led, military and civilian. The sacrifice of millions of lives (not to mention the millions whose lives were changed forever) was brought to naught by the short-sighted, vengeance-driven treaty which led to WW11. It certainly gives war a bad name.

The PBS series of the same name was where I first learned about the first world war, and this book features so much more. To those who just want descriptions of battle then this book is not for you, this book looks at the cultural beliefs of the time and how the war changed them. I knew nothing about the first world war until the PBS series came out, since then I have been an avid student of the great war, a war that can be summed up in one word,'waste.' Out of all the books that I have read on the first world war, I have always remembered this one as my real introduction to the war, much of the information in it can not be found in other books on the subject, many of which are rather long winded and dry. The fact that so many incidents of the twentieth century can be traced back to the first war was an amazing revilation for me, I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in more than a bunch of bloody battles.

This book is a wonderful companion to the excellent PBS series of the same title. If you are looking for a book that tells stories of the all the military actions, this is probably not the book you want - Check out John Keegan's "The Face of Battle". This book (and the video series) tells the history from a more personal perspective through both famous and ordinary individuals and explains how one event has had profound impacts on the rest of the century. The reviewer who said this book focuses on Art and Poetry is correct. Winter, Blaggett and the others are trying to show the impact of war goes beyond politics and does not end with the signing of a treaty. It follows along the lines of work such as Paul Fussell "The Great War and Modern Memory" and Modris Eksteins "The Rites of Spring". The series is great classroom tool for introducing WWI to students from middle school through college and to explore topics beyond the destruction of Europe including the effects of mourning and memory, art and music in our 20th Century society.