|
Loading... The First World War (2003)by Hew Strachan
I confess I didn't finish this. Half way through I wondered why I was reading it. It just didn't hold my attention. (  ) denmoir | Jul 21, 2012 |  Hew Strachan's The First World War is somewhat of a companion piece to the documentary series of the same name. It was interesting to read the book after watching the series, because the book preserves much of the thematic-vice chronological-approach of the series. While I thought that approach worked really well for tv, it made for slightly scattered reading and I was glad that I had already read a couple more straightforward histories of the war because the book, by necessity, jumped around in time and place quite a bit. Highlights for me: Strachan's discussion of the development, refinement, and integration of new tactics and technologies of warfare (one of the reasons I find ww1 so fascinating in the first place), and his discussion in the final pages of the book about how the meaning and memories of the war changed over time-many participants in the war did not initially view it as the exercise in futility that they would later come to see it as. This latter point led Strachan, both in the book and in the documentary, to place a premium on using soldiers' contemporaneous reflections, rather than their later memories, when trying to capture the lived experience. (  ) fannyprice | Jan 28, 2012 | Excellent explanation of what the belligerents were thinking as they fell into combat. It was a series of mistakes based on faulty assumptions. ( ) picardyrose | Mar 2, 2009 | An excellent examination of the First World War. This book strikes a good balance between analysis of the sociopolitical causes and effects of the war, economic considerations, and personal accounts of the battles and aftermath of the Great War. ( ) BucksLRC1 | Jul 31, 2007 | Companion to a TV documentary on the first world war. I found this book to be a great general overview of the first world war – not too detailed, not too scholarly but thoroughly researched and well written. The book is organized along themes, which mirror the structure of the documentary, and in this sense, the conflict is not treated in a strict chronological manner. Therein lies its strengths and weaknesses: for while it may lack clarity at times and jump ahead in the unfolding of events, the complexity and scale of the conflict perhaps calls for such a non-linear treatment. I was happy to see that the book did not exclusively focus on the western front and does show the worldwide dimension of the conflict. Color photos of the French colonial troops highlight that fact. The author also brings into play and adeptly illustrates some of the emerging trends: the clash of ideologies and civilizations, military strategies, the consolidation of nationalism in Europe and in its rise in the colonies, and the conflict’s consequences still reverberating to this day in the Balkans, Russia and the Middle East. Overall, an authoritative overview of the first world war, and a basis for further reading based on interests, perhaps time to tackle those histories the size of a telephone directory. (  ) thierry | Mar 20, 2007 | no reviews | add a review
References to this work on external resources.
|
 Google Books — Loading...Popular coversRatingAverage: (3.8)
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Wikipedia in English (6)
1