Edmond Taylor (1908–1998)

Probably the best book I've ever read about World War I (and I've read plenty) and all of the incidents leading up to it. Thorough, well-written, entertaining, and most of all, the realization that there was SO much more leading up to it than just one assassination. Every country involved did something stupid along the way to make those things coalesce into a deadly and useless war. Highly recommended.

I was a bit put-off by the author's penchant for snappy write-offs of each character. But he does convey the chaos of chance and incompetence that consistently moved Europe in the worst possible direction. Very much written with the benefit of hindsight. Now superceded by Christopher Clark's Sleepwalkers.

Excellent reading on the massive disruption that was the end of these significant governments. Regardless of how good or bad you judge them, the loss of the Ottoman, Austrian, German and Russian governments had enormous impact on the world at the time and for decades afterwards.

Before his assignment to India and China as an OSS coordinator in 1943,
Taylor had no interest in China. He "prepared himself" for his
assignment by reading St. Exupery, T.E.Lawrence, and E.M. Forster, as
they were "men who could step out of their own culture into an alien
one and begin to look at their own civilization as foreign...". xiii.
Respectful treatment of Buddhism/Hinduism one is pleasantly
surprised to read from the same author of The Strategy of Terror, the
definitive work on Nazi show more employment of propaganda -- "psychological
warfare". As optimistic as one on a quest for enlightenment, Taylor
describes the delusions people have about other people. In a 1965
reprise, he finds a "Chinese imperialism with deeper historical roots
and greater potential has replaced that of the Japanese." May strike
some as an apologist for colonial "stability" under color of this
embedded journalism. However, he ventilates facts and understands the
problems of Wendell Wilkie's One World arising from Asia. And he
savages the "sahib disease" -- the pathology which afflicts those
placed in superior positions over others -- particularly in the
segregated clubs of colonialism. show less