This is a fascinating history. The editors sifted through correspondence and diaries of a great many participants in WW1 and selected just a few whose combination of language, style and experience made them particularly valuable and interesting. Their words are presented in extracts from their original writings all in chronological order so the reader is carried through the war by very different accounts from very different places: a young schoolboy in occupied France, a Turkish junior officer, a frightened and anxious young Russian soldier at the front, a teenaged girl in East Prussia, etc.

Reading the translations of the actual experiences of these participants caught up as they variously were in the European cataclysm is an enthralling and unique way of getting a feeling for how it was for them in their separate situations. If I could have the history of everywhere and every-when presented in the same fashion I don't think I'd want to read much of any other kind of history. ( )