Average customer rating:
- Making the World Safe for Democracy?
- Goodbye to Graves Books
- Warning! Heavily Edited Version
- An Accurate and Entertaining View on an English Soldier's Perspective During the First World War
- Very interesting, but long in spots
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Good-Bye to All That: An Autobiography (Anchor Books)
Robert Graves
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ASIN: 0385093306
Release Date: 1958-02-01 |
Amazon.com
The quintessential memoir of the generation of Englishmen who suffered in World War I is among the bitterest autobiographies ever written. Robert Graves's stripped-to-the-bone prose seethes with contempt for his class, his country, his military superiors, and the civilians who mindlessly cheered the carnage from the safety of home. His portrait of the stupidity and petty cruelties endemic in England's elite schools is almost as scathing as his depiction of trench warfare. Nothing could equal Graves's bone-chilling litany of meaningless death, horrific encounters with gruesomely decaying corpses, and even more appalling confrontations with the callousness and arrogance of the military command. Yet this scarifying book is consistently enthralling. Graves is a superb storyteller, and there's clearly something liberating about burning all your bridges at 34 (his age when Good-Bye to All That was first published in 1929). He conveys that feeling of exhilaration to his readers in a pell-mell rush of words that remains supremely lucid. Better known as a poet, historical novelist, and critic, Graves in this one work seems more like an English Hemingway, paring his prose to the minimum and eschewing all editorializing because it would bring him down to the level of the phrase- and war-mongers he despises. --Wendy Smith
Book Description
In this autobiography, first published in 1929, poet Robert Graves traces the monumental and universal loss of innocence that occurred as a result of the First World War. Written after the war and as he was leaving his birthplace, he thought, forever, Good-Bye to All That bids farewell not only to England and his English family and friends, but also to a way of life. Tracing his upbringing from his solidly middle-class Victorian childhood through his entry into the war at age twenty-one as a patriotic captain in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, this dramatic, poignant, often wry autobiography goes on to depict the horrors and disillusionment of the Great War, from life in the trenches and the loss of dear friends, to the stupidity of government bureaucracy and the absurdity of English class stratification. Paul Fussell has hailed it as ""the best memoir of the First World War"" and has written the introduction to this new edition that marks the eightieth anniversary of the end of the war. An enormous success when it was first issued, it continues to find new readers in the thousands each year and has earned its designation as a true classic.
Customer Reviews:
Making the World Safe for Democracy?.......2007-07-15
This account by Robert Graves is one of the better personal journals I have read concerning the Great War. The very fact that Graves is in almost at the beginning of the conflict / situation of Trench warfare make this a very valuable work. Because he is an accomplished writer, it flows and reads very well. There are no sections of the book that lag. You will absolutely gain some insight to the way that the officers and men behaved and especially appreciate his commentary on French citizens caught in the middle of the conflict, individual soldiers that have some sembelance of a brain versus the moronic mass, and how much stupidity there is in military conduct based on previous experiences in war, not realizing that this was a new and different sort of conflict, yet trying to constantly apply outdated and dangerous methods in attack. One such crazy result of it is that officers had a high casualty rate. Why? Well, you could always identify them in the field of battle. They were the guys carrying a pistol and swagger stick versus a rifle. Easy pickings to say the least and you would think they would learn and make adjustments accordingly but tragically the practice continued. Anyway, a great book. Well worth your time and small investment to a window on another era by a first hand witness.
Goodbye to Graves Books.......2007-02-26
Good descriptive text of WWI in the trenches and on the way to them, but other than that, not a particularly well-written book. Graves's 'better than thou' attitude sours what could have been a masterpiece if written by somebody with a heart. A bitter story by a bitter man who should have stuck to his poetry.
Warning! Heavily Edited Version.......2007-01-13
This is the edition that Graves edited to all Jesus hell! I've seen excerpts of the unedited version and THAT is the book to aim for, though you have to find it through an antiquarian book peddler and the cheapest edition I could find cost $300. Rats. But hopefully perhaps an electronic edition of the original will somehow find its' way to the internet one day.
What is left is still an excellent read. Concerning the up to that date unprecedented rate of slaughter and the technological changes of modern warfare that made it so, his way is understatement which I believe made it that much more impactful. I like this man's mind - I like him. It would have been very interesting to corner him by a fire with a bottle of good sherry and to let him expound on the Latin or WWI or poetry, or perhaps Hebrew mythology.
Speaking of Hebrew mythology, he wrote a wonderful wonderful book on it, a treatise really on the book of Genesis. If you have any interest whatsover in religion, etymology or anthropology, please read this book - it is wonderful! Just google or "amazon" Graves and Hebrew myths and you will find it.
I have his "White Goddess", but have not read it yet.
An Accurate and Entertaining View on an English Soldier's Perspective During the First World War.......2006-11-11
The first half of the book is rather dry, yet don't let it hold you back! The second half of the book deals with his actual involvement with the war, as opposed to his education and prior background. The book is somewhat of a love story as well as a view on war, but his depictions of events are quite honest and astutely accurate. His views are quite contrasted with Ernst Junger, who wrote "Storm of Steel" and was a German soldier. However, for an English perspective, this is the best book by far that I have encountered!
Very interesting, but long in spots.......2006-10-17
Before reading this book, I knew little about WWI. I saw it recommended somewhere and ordered it from our library. I'm not sure which issue it was. Anyway, it was very interesting and well written. I learned a lot about the way gas was used in WWI.
I found myself amazed that the author kept going back to the trenches when he could have avoided that duty. Actually, I got a little frustrated with him too!
About two-thirds of the way through it became a bit of a slog to finish, but overall, I highly recommend it.
Amazon.com
If someone less distinguished than Jesus College, Oxford, fellow Niall Ferguson had written The Pity of War, you could be forgiven for thinking the book was out for a few cheap headlines by contradicting almost every accepted orthodoxy about the First World War. Ferguson argues that Britain was as much to blame for the start of the war as Germany, and that, had Britain sacrificed Belgium to Germany, the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution would never have happened. Germany, he continues, would have created a united European state, and Britain could have remained a superpower. He also contends that there was little enthusiasm for the war in Britain in 1914; on the other hand, he claims the war was prolonged not by clever manipulation of the media, but by British soldiers' taking pleasure in combat. If that isn't enough, he further maintains that it wasn't the severity of the conditions imposed on Germany at Versailles in 1919 that led inexorably to World War II, and blames instead the comparative leniency and the failure to collect reparations in full.
The Pity of War, with no pretensions to offering a grand narrative of the war, goes over its chosen questions like a polemical tract. As such it is immensely readable, well researched, and controversial. You may not end up agreeing with all of Ferguson's arguments, but that should not deter you from reading it. All of us need our deeply held views challenged from time to time, even if only to remind us why we've got them. --John Crace, Amazon.co.uk
Book Description
A landmark work of history that challenges our most basic assumptions about the causes and consequences of the First World War
In The Pity of War, Niall Ferguson makes a simple and provocative argument: that the human atrocity known as the Great War was entirely England's fault. Britain, according to Ferguson, entered into war based on nave assumptions of German aims-and England's entry into the war transformed a Continental conflict into a world war, which they then badly mishandled, necessitating American involvement. The war was not inevitable, Ferguson argues, but rather the result of the mistaken decisions of individuals who would later claim to have been in the grip of huge impersonal forces.
That the war was wicked, horrific, inhuman, is memorialized in part by the poetry of men like Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, but also by cold statistics. More British soldiers were killed in the first day of the Battle of the Somme than Americans in the Vietnam War; indeed, the total British fatalities in that single battle-some 420,000-exceeds the entire American fatalities for both World Wars. And yet, as Ferguson writes, while the war itself was a disastrous folly, the great majority of men who fought it did so with enthusiasm. Ferguson vividly brings back to life this terrifying period, not through dry citation of chronological chapter and verse but through a series of brilliant chapters focusing on key ways in which we now view the First World War.
For anyone wanting to understand why wars are fought, why men are willing to fight them, and why the world is as it is today, there is no sharper nor more stimulating guide than Niall Ferguson's The Pity of War.
Customer Reviews:
A provocative economic, diplomatic and (just a little bit) military analysis of World War I causes and results.......2007-07-24
If you expected the usual 'guts-and-glory' book then this is the wrong book for you. Being an economic historian allows Ferguson to innocently tell the World War I story from a different angle re-evaluating the World War I and challenging the pre-conceived ideas. He perhaps takes a clinical view of the factors leading up to WWI and the issues arising during its execution. Ferguson subjects all of these supposed 'truths' to rigorous analysis. However, I did find parts of the book heavy going - my knowledge of the workings of international finance is close to zero, and the book has big slabs of this as Ferguson discusses the financial world prior to 1914 and then the whole business of how to finance a major war for which you hadn't prepared. For me, one of the most dismal facts was how much it costs to take another human life in wartime. The Central Powers were far more efficient at killing than were the Allies - it cost the Central Powers $11,345 to kill an Allied soldier, whereas it cost the Allies $36,485 to kill a German soldier. Another dismal fact is that, far from the legend that has come down, how many people enjoyed the war and indeed got a kick out of killing other human beings.
Was World War I necessary after all? Mr Ferguson regards it as essentially history's biggest traffic accident. It was a war nobody wanted, but not only did it come but it also stayed for four years, in spite of the horrific cost in men and money. This is not a conventional battle-by-battle history; Ferguson takes an entirely different tack - he poses (and seeks to answer) ten questions:
1. Was war inevitable?
2. Why did Germany's leaders gamble on war in 1914?
3. Why did Britain get involved in a Continental war?
4. Was the war really greeted with popular enthusiasm?
5. Did propaganda and the press keep the war going?
6. Why did the huge economic superiority of the British Empire not inflict defeat on the Central Powers more quickly, and without US assistance?
7. Why did the military superiority of the German army fail to deliver victory over the French and the British on the Western Front?
8. Why did men keep fighting in the appalling conditions?
9. Why did men stop fighting?
10. Who won the peace?
The answers he comes up with are occasionally surprising. Small wonder the book has had mixed reviews in academic historical circles. But of course there can never be "right" and "wrong" answers to such questions, only opinions. But, in my opinion Mr Ferguson makes his cases very well. Many of the conclusions, insights and points of view are fascinating, and Ferguson, as always, writes with wit, clarity and style. Ferguson also looks at the great "what ifs". The British entry into the war (and it's clear that the UK government by no means felt obliged to uphold its treaty obligations to Belgium) made a continental war into a world war. If it hadn't, the result might have been the European Union 80 years early. Is this thought realistic? We'll never know, which is perhaps just as well. All in all, a long but interesting and thought-provoking book, and well worth reading but, for a more complete picture, it would be better to accompany it with some other books on the military topics of that war.
The Best History of World War One.......2007-07-17
With charm and ease, author Niall Ferguson challenges the accepted wisdom about the causes and effects of WW1. Ferguson establishes intimacy at once with a reference to a family member who fought in the Great War. He goes on to lay out his thesis with elegance and precision. And then, chapter by chapter, he questions established beliefs and offers factual, fascinating answers. The book is distinguished by an alert, fresh, almost rhetorical style of writing which sets apart Ferguson from other authors. Ferguson is the Martin Daunton of history.
This is a book about War for those who loathe war, a book about economics for those who shun the dismal science and a book about human failure for those who still hope humans can learn to live in peace.
Niall Ferguson rattles another cage.......2007-01-22
Niall Ferguson has a knack for using command of the subject and ever-present wit to make arguments that can often only be denied on moral ideological grounds. This is no less true of this work, which, amongst other things, argues that Britain should not have entered the First World War. Instead, Germany should have been allowed to dominate Europe - to save many lives - while Britain focused her energies on maintaining the empire, which, as any reader of Ferguson knows, is important to him for a variety of other reasons. This may also have prevented the Bolshevik Revolution, he argues. But instead Britain pushed for war and was therefore as guilty as Germany. This book is hardly a "story" of the War. Instead, he systematically argues against all the held dogmas. Revisionist history certainly has its place, and in this case his arguments may have served to reignite the arguments that revolve around this "pitiful" war.
Brilliant and disturbing.......2006-04-08
For the sheer audacity and brilliance of his principle thesis, this volume has a place in historical studies. Unlike most other historians, who use the myriad 'facts' about the war to support a simplistic theory of 'good' vs 'evil'[just as the average Joe is into moral absolutes] --- the conclusion of Ferguson's breathtaking analysis can hardly be argued with: that the failure of England, France & the US to realize that the relatively new nation of Germany would be, at steady state, the dominant power on the continent --- and thus, what we call WWI AND WWII could have been averted. Of course, today's 'balance-of-power in the status quo' advocates will not learn much, if anything, from this brilliant book. The anointed moral superior (eg the US) is entitled to dominate. The truth: the US nor any other country is a morally superior agent.
A different look at WWI.......2006-02-25
Niall Ferguson is known to stir the pot on touchy subjects and Pity of War does not disappoint. Filled with statistics and theories, Ferguson gives us his view of why the Allies won and Germany lost. This question has produced heated debates ranging from ludicrous (John Mosier and Fritz Fischer) to well thought out and researched (Hew Strachan and John Keegan). Ferguson falls somewhere in the middle by providing some good arguments such as Britain failed to provide the pivotal advantage needed to end the war despite their superior economy because the workforce was sent to fight. Another point made is why Germany failed to win despite having a vastly superior army. Ferguson believes the failure to pursue their political goals via force of the military removed any clear objective to obtain and relegated the war to senseless violence. Due to the lack of objectives, the war was extended needlessly and subsequently lowered the morale of the soldiers as was seen on both sides in the later years.
Ferguson also adds what almost every war book lacks, the human element. He poses the question: why did the men keep fighting despite the carnage surrounding them.
One last issue I have with this book is in scope. Britain and Germany are covered extensively, leaving the other participants to be mentioned here and there. More information on the French, Russians, Americans would make the book a more rounded work. Inclusion of the African and Asian portions of the war would help readers who are not as knowledgeable, but this point is neglected by a majority of WWI authors.
Book Description
This book, the result of an international collaborative project, provides a new quantitative view of the wartime economic experiences of six great powers: the UK, the United States, Germany, Italy, Japan and the USSR. A chapter is devoted to each country, while the introductory chapter presents a comparative overview. It aims to provide a text of statistical reference for those interested in international and comparative economic history, the history of World War II, the history of economic policy, and comparative economic systems.
Customer Reviews:
macroeconomic overview of major combatants.......1998-12-31
This book is a very learned overview of the macro-economic factors affecting the WWII war economies of major combatants. A certain degree of acquaintance with economic monetary theory is advisable. The fact that it includes all the major players is valuable (any article on Italy's war efforts is always welcome!), but the emphasis some of the articles give to econometric treatment is, frankly, irrelevant to understanding most of the war effort, especially when one is talking of survival. The book also tries to analyse how wartime experience helped shape the post war economy, a field in which it it quite successful. It is worth noting, by the way, that generally speaking all the authors seem to agree that wartime investment in capital formation and technical training schemes paid off for the vanquished, whilst in the case of the USSR, the amount of war destruction and the political predominance of the "industrial-military complex" led, ultimately, to economic stagnation.
Advisable for anyone with a serious interest in wartime economics.
Book Description
This important new contribution to the successful textbook series New Approaches to European History explores the comprehensive impact of the First World War on Imperial Germany. It examines military aspects of the conflict, as well as the diplomacy, government, politics and industrial mobilization of wartime Germany. Unlike other existing surveys, Roger Chickering also offers a rich portrait of life on the home front: the war’s pervasive effects on wealthy and poor, men and women, young and old, farmers and city-dwellers, Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. At the same time, Roger Chickering analyzes the growing burdens of war and discusses the translation of the hardship of war into political opposition. This excellent, well-illustrated study of the military, political and socio-economic effects of the First World War will be essential reading for all students of German and European history, as well as for those interested in the history of war and society.
Download Description
This book provides a comprehensive survey of Germany's experience during the First World War. Roger Chickering examines the military aspects of the conflict, as well as the diplomacy, government and politics of wartime Germany. However, at the same time, he also provides an important, and rare, portrayal of life on the homefront: the war's pervasive effects on people from all walks of life and from varying religious backgrounds. This well-illustrated study will be essential reading for all students of German and European history.
Customer Reviews:
Very good book.......2002-08-22
This book combines a look at the WW I battlefield with events on the German homefront very well. Chickering focuses on the homefront and details very well the reaction to mobilization and the events of the war, as well as the defeat. One of the best chapters of the book is on the myth of the stab in the back. This book really is a necessary read if one also wants to understand the "other half" of the European Civil War, WW II.
Central Powers.......2002-04-28
As a self taught historian of The Great War, I think this book is excellent.
A Model of Its Kind.......2001-07-18
Imperial Germany and the Great War is a masterful combination of the political, social, and cultural history of the war with the relevant military events. I know of no single book that covers so much territory in so little space. Anyone interested in the what was going on behind the lines will find the answers here!
Outstanding survey of the topic!.......2001-01-11
In a relatively short volume, the author gives a lucid, restrained survey of a complicated and controversial topic. Coverage is of all phases of the war affecting Germany--military, social, economic, and political--though relatively short shrift is given to military matters, so this book is not for World War I military "enthusiasts"--unless they want to go beyond what occurred in combat. A particularly good feature of the book is the wealth of references to the vast amount of scholarly work done on the war in English and German over the last half century. The author's comprehensive "Suggestions for Further Reading" will serve well either the novice historian or the layperson interested in particular aspects of Germany and the Great War.
Clear, reliable account of events on Germany's home front.......1998-10-30
The theme of this well-balanced, well-arranged book is not the German military effort but political and social developments on the home front. In the end, these were to prove almost as decisive as the greater military strength of the Entente powers and the United States in bringing about Germany's defeat. As the author shows, Germany was a deeply divided society going into the war, and the "civic peace" proclaimed in August 1914 among the nation's bitterly opposed social classes and political interests was not to last long. The attempt to sustain a war effort against France, Great Britain and Russia - with only the hopelessly incompetent Austro-Hungarian Empire as an ally - necessitated huge sacrifices on the home front. Ultimately, the majority of the German population was not willing to keep making those sacrifices, particularly on behalf of a political system that had evolved by late 1916 from the semi-authoritarianism of the pre-war Kaiserreich into a pure military dictatorship. Adolf Hitler later came to power exploiting the myth of the "November criminals" - that is, those who led the German revolution of November 1918 and who, in his eyes, traitorously inflicted a defeat on Germany that need never have taken place. However, as Chickering shows in some detail, the truth is that Germany was certain by mid-1918 to lose the war anyway. This is a book for readers who are interested more in the political than the military aspects of the First World War. It holds no surprises but is authoritative and efficiently written.
Average customer rating:
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Jamaican Volunteers in the First World War: Race, Masculinity and the Development of National Consciousness
Richard Smith
Manufacturer: Manchester University Press
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0719069858
Release Date: 2005-02-10 |
Book Description
This groundbreaking study explores the dynamics of race and masculinity to provide fresh historical insight into the First World War and its imperial dimensions, by examining the experiences of Jamaicans who served in British regiments. Despite their exclusion from the battlefield, the author shows that the experience of war was invaluable in allowing veterans to appropriate codes of heroism, sacrifice and citizenship in order to wage their own battles for independence on their return home, culminating in the nationalist upsurge of the late 1930s.
Book Description
This study is based on the extraordinarily rich and varied range of trench journalism that brings to life - in the vivid language of the soldiers themselves - not only their suffering but also their vulgarity, sentimentality and idealism.
Book Description
In the firmament of great historical novelists, Anne Perry is a star of the greatest magnitude. First there were her acclaimed Victorian mysteries, sparkling with passion and suspense. Now readers have embraced this bestselling new series of World War I novels–which juxtapose the tranquil life of the English countryside with the horrors of war.
By April of 1915, as chaplain Joseph Reavley tends to the soldiers in his care, the nightmare of trench warfare is impartially cutting down England’s youth. On one of his rescue forays into no-man’s-land, Joseph finds the body of an arrogant war correspondent, Eldon Prentice. A nephew of the respected General Owen Cullingford, Prentice was despised for his prying attempts to elicit facts that would turn public opinion against the war. Most troublesome to Joseph, Prentice has been killed not by German fire but, apparently, by one of his own compatriots. What Englishman hated Prentice enough to kill him? Joseph is afraid he may know, and his sister, Judith, who is General Cullingford’s driver and translator, harbors her own fearful suspicions.
Meanwhile, Joseph and Judith’s brother, Matthew, an intelligence officer in London, continues his quiet search for the sinister figure they call the Peacemaker, who, like Eldon Prentice, is trying to undermine the public support for the struggle–and, as the Reavley family has good reason to believe, is in fact at the heart of a fantastic plot to reshape the entire world. An intimate of kings, the Peacemaker kills with impunity, and his dark shadow stretches from the peaceful country lanes of Cambridgeshire to the twin hells of Ypres and Gallipoli.
In this mesmerizing series, Anne Perry has found a subject worthy of her gifts. Illuminating the murderous conflict whose violence still resounds in our consciousness–as well as the souls of men and women who lived it–Shoulder the Sky is a taut, inspiring masterpiece.
From the Hardcover edition.
Download Description
CHAPTER ONE
It was shortly after three in the afternoon. Joseph Reavley was half asleep in the April sun, his back to the pale clay wall of the trench, when he heard the angry voices.
¿They be moi boots, Tucky Nunn, an¿ you know that well as Oi do! Yours be over there wi¿ holes in ¿em!¿ It was Plugger Arnold, a seasoned soldier of twenty, big-boned, a son of the village blacksmith. He had been in Flanders since the outbreak of war in August. Although he was angry, he kept his voice low. He knew it carried in the afternoon stillness when the men snatched the three or four hours of sleep they could.
The German trenches were only seventy yards away across this stretch of the Ypres Salient. Anyone foolish enough to reach a hand up above the parapet would be likely to get it shot. The snipers seldom needed a second chance. Added to which, getting yourself injured on purpose was a court-martial offense.
Tucky Nunn, nineteen and new this far forward, was standing on the duckboards that floored the trench. They were there to keep the men¿s feet above the icy water that sloshed around, but they seldom worked. The water level was too high. Every time you thought it was drying out at last, it rained again.
¿Yeah?¿ Tucky said, his eyebrows raised. ¿Fit me perfect, they do. Didn¿t see your name on ¿em. Must ¿ave wore off.¿ He grinned, making no move to bend and unlace the offending boots and hand them back.
Plugger was sitting half sideways on the fire-step. A few yards away the sentry was standing with his back to them, staring through the periscope over the wire and mud of no-man¿s-land. He could not afford to lose concentration even for a moment, regardless of what went on behind him.
¿They¿s moi boots,¿ Plugger said between his teeth. ¿Take ¿em off yer soddin¿ feet an¿ give ¿em back to me, or Oi¿ll take ¿em off yer and give yer to the rats!¿
Tucky bounced on the balls of his feet, hunching his shoulders a little. ¿You want to try?¿ he invited.
Doughy Ward crawled out of his dugout, fully dressed, as they all were: webbing and rifle with bayonet attached. His fair-skinned face was crumpled with annoyance at being robbed of any part of his few hours of sleep. He glared at Joseph. ¿ `Thou shalt not steal.¿ Isn¿t that right, Chaplain?¿
It was a demand that even here in the mud and the cold, amid boredom and sporadic violence, Joseph should do his job and stand for the values of justice that must remain, or all this would sink into a purposeless hell. Without right and wrong there was no sanity.
¿Oi didn¿t steal them!¿ Tucky said angrily. ¿They were . . .¿ He did not finish the sentence because Plugger hit him, a rolling blow that caught the side of his jaw as he ducked and struck back.
There was no point in shouting at them, and the sound would carry. Added to which Joseph did not want to let the whole trench know that there was a discipline problem. Both men could end up on a charge, and that was not the way for a chaplain to resolve anything. He moved forward, careful to avoid being struck himself, and grasped hold of Tucky, taking him off balance and knocking him against the uprights that held the trench wall.
¿The Germans are that way!¿ he said tartly, jerking his head back toward the parapet and no-man¿s-land beyond.
Plugger was up on his feet, slithering in the mud on the duckboards, his socks filthy and sodden. ¿Good oidea to send him over the top, Captain, where he belongs! But not in moi boots!¿ He was floundering toward them, arms flailing as if to carry on the fight.
Joseph stepped between them, risking being caught by both, the worst part of which would be that then a charge would be unavoidable. ¿Stop it!¿ he ordered briskly. ¿Take the boots off, Nunn!¿
¿Thank you, Chaplain,¿ Plugger responded with a smile of satisfaction
Customer Reviews:
A slow second act. .......2007-04-29
I could read Perry's descriptions of a English countryside for hundreds of pages, but I can not say the same about the way she goes on about the emotions the characters are experiencing in this book. When Perry did give descriptions of the horrors of the first World War the book picked up very well, and even the side excursion to Gallipoli was done well. The story does get sidetracked from original murder mystery, but not to a point of no return. The ongoing chase of 'The Peacemaker' still entertains, but his machinations do not seem overly inspired in this book. If the third novel goes the same directions, in terms of exploring the emotional side of the characters, vice historical fiction and mystery I will give up on the series. Instead, I will pick up on the new Arturo Perez-Reverte series sooner then I expected.
Absolutely Riveting!.......2007-01-28
In her second book of her World War I series, Shoulder The Sky, Anne Perry delivers another stunning story revolving around the Reavley siblings. The death of a young war correspondent, Eldon Prentice, at first seems to be one of the many casualties of war. Upon closer inspection, Joseph Reavley, a Chaplin working on the front lines in Ypres, suspects Prentice was not a casualty of war, but murdered. Meanwhile Matthew Reavley, a diligent employee of the Secret Intelligence Service, continues to track down the elusive Peacemaker. While the plot line itself is fantastic, it is Perry's ability to paint a vivid picture of life during the war that captivates the reader. Perry is unrelenting in her description of life in the trenches. She has a unique ability to convey the horrors of war, but at the same time express the fierce companionship between the men fighting for what they believe in. Even if the plotline does not interest you, her meticulous research and dramatic presentation of the war effort is well worth the read. I find it hard to believe that after writing so many novels Anne Perry is still able to present us with fresh storylines, incredibly realistic characters and a vivid reconstruction of life during World War I. This is definitely one of Perry's better works.
Can't wait for the next edition in this series.......2006-08-08
I am not usually an Anne Perry fan, but this series is wonderful, can't put the books down. I have read all three books in the series, starting with Shoulder the Sky. I can't wait for the next one. I am now an Anne Perry fan.
For heavens sake.......2006-07-06
I cannot say I enjoyed this book, largely because the main character, Joseph Reaveley, seemed to me to be self-absorbed and oddly moralistic in his approach to the horrors of war and the challenge of defending what often seems entirely indefensible. For example, there is the rotten war correspondent who forces (though heaven knows why) a courtmartial of a poor wounded soldier who may or may not have deliberately maimed himself to get out of the trenches and tunnels he was wounded in. It is never quite clear why in the face of no evidence of self-mutilation this fellow is courtmartialed and possibly (we never know) likely to be hung. It is, apparently, because, morality and honor require this??? Then, when this same correspondent turns up dead (with everyone thinking it couldn't have happened to a nicer fellow)- Saint Chaplain Reavely takes it upon himself to find out if he was murdered and if so, by whom. This, in the midst of trench warfare, poison gas - and then the idiocy of Gallipoli - where Joseph appears to confront another war correspondent who thinks the stupidity of that battle should be reported. Oh no, says our Joseph who is horrified that anyone in England should know of this - and tries to stop him - risking his own death (how incredibly brave) as well as that of another poor wounded fellow who, of course, is ready and willing to die, because Joseph knows best. Then, of course, there is Joseph's moral outrage at his sister who is chastely yearning for a General, and his "courageous" decision to ruin his best friend's life because doing so is "the morally defensible and right thing to do" despite the fact that Joe knows what his friend did was necessary to save England from the truth of the horrors of war. Really? This was the most disappointing of this series. Joe's previous moralizing was a bit much - but tolerable. This one was way over the top and thoroughly unbelievable.
Lest we forget the price paid for our freedoms..........2006-04-26
I became interested in WWI not as a person looking for tragedies (which it most definitely was) but rather in doing geneaology and learning about a great-uncle of mine who served in Europe during that time period. That geneaology also led to my finding out that my great-grandmother who suffered from epilepsy was placed in a 'poorhouse' due to epilepsy, where she died from influenza that struck the world at the end of the war. All this information made my family seem more real to me, and made me want to read more about their lives then, what was good, what was bad.
I've found a few very excellent mystery writers who write within this time frame, such as Charles Todd. I love his books,and though I am not absolutely crazy about Perry's other mysteries, I knew she was a fairly good writer...so I thought I'd give these a try.Other than being overly repititious, Perry did an interesting story here. There are a few subplots going on, involving a family of four adult children who in the midst of living their lives are also trying to find the person who assassinated their parents (in the first book which I have yet to read).
Two of the children are at the front; one as a chaplain who is feeling somewhat useless in the face of so much carnage, and one is a voluntary ambulance driver who seems to have found her calling. A rather objectionable journalist finds his way to their area of the front, and proceeds to antagonize everyone, and it is obvious that he means to blow the lid of this can of worms about how useless this war is and discourage other young men from signing up for the draft and keeping other countries from assisting Germany. What is not known is this man is in cahoots with the man who killed Reavely parents for ulterior reasons of splitting the world up into basically two halves, and greatly curtailing individual freedoms.
This man is killed, and though no one is mourning his loss, the priest finds it necessary for his own peace of mind to determine who killed him and bring that person to some form of justice. In doing so, he ends up hurting himself...which sometimes happens when we do what is right.
Many of the accolades given to Perry on her writing are true. She does do justice to the time period, when so much seemed so bleak, and where it is difficult to find a moral compass when so much is at stake. I enjoyed this and will continue to read them as they come out.
Karen Sadler
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Balfour and Foreign Policy: The International Thought of a Conservative Statesman
Jason Tomes
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0521581184 |
Book Description
Arthur James Balfour was British prime minister (1902-5) and foreign secretary (1916-19), a conservative and an intellectual. This is the first analysis of his thinking on a full range of international issues, such as British imperialism, Great Power relations in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, central Asia and the Far East, the First World War, the Russian revolution, Zionism, the League of Nations and, above all, the Anglo-American relationship. Balfour emerges with a distinctively conservative approach to foreign affairs that demonstrates a continuity of belief from his philosophical writings to his political practice.
Book Description
The year 2000 marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of The Great War and Modern Memory, winner of the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and recently named by the Modern Library one of the twentieth century's 100 Best Non-Fiction Books. Fussell's landmark study of WWI remains as original and gripping today as ever before: a literate, literary, and illuminating account of the Great War, the one that changed a generation, ushered in the modern era, and revolutionized how we see the world. Exploring the work of Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, Edmund Blunden, David Jones, Isaac Rosenberg, and Wilfred Owen, Fussell supplies contexts, both actual and literary, for those writers who most effectively memorialized WWI as an historical experience with conspicuous imaginative and artistic meaning. For this special edition, the author has prepared a new afterword and a suggested further reading list. As this classic work draws upon several disciplines--among them literary studies, military history, cultural criticism, and historical inquiry--it will continue to appeal to students, scholars, and general readers of various backgrounds.
Customer Reviews:
Tolkien: MIA........2007-07-03
Another must-read for anyone interested in great literature. From the sublime to the mundane, Fussell is most fascinating. This can be a fairly quick read -- perhaps a long weekend for most, but then you will find yourself returning to re-read certain chapters, and it will definitely end up on your desk as a reference book. I was most pleased to see many references to the Bloomsbury Group, but I was surprised that there was no mention of JRR Tolkien whose The Lord of the Rings, I believe, had its genesis in the trenches of WWI.
10 Stars, Not 5.......2007-06-22
This book is some 25 years old, but still shares with Edward Said's "Orientalism" the prize for best literary criticism. Unlike Said's book, however, Fussell's analysis has never been attacked or questioned; it has only gained in stature over the years. It is, quite simply, a beautiful book and was rightly recognized when it first appeared as an instant classic. It was written at a time when historians were just beginning to crawl around old battlefields looking for new ways to tell the story of war. Fussell got down and dirty in the trenches of France and came back with a story of how the gruesome battles of WWI shaped a generation of English writers and artists. There is not much new that can be said about this superb book, except that there has been no better book written since its publication by an American on literature.
Normal.......2007-06-03
One must be a drooling English major to read, much less, enjoy this book.
It has nothing to do with reality.
An important book in a time of war.......2007-03-09
On one level, Fussell writes about World War I, and his unsparing depiction of the industrialized killing in this first "modern" war will acquaint readers with a war that now seems very distant. On the second level, he shows how British World War I soldiers viewed their experience through the literary and popular culture they brought to the trenches--through ideas of the pastoral, of epic sacrifice, of manly strength and beauty. Fussell brilliantly links "The Oxford Book of English Verse" and the battlefields of France. His discussion of how the poppy came to be a symbol of this war is alone worth the price of the book. Finally, and most interestingly, there is Fussell's idea that this particular past is not distant at all. He not only points out how accounts of the second World War were influenced by accounts of the first, but suggests how some of the ways we currently think about war are shaped by the Great War. One wonders, in the midst of it, what myths of our own we bring to our conceptions of the War On Terror.
Clearly one of the best books written on WWI.......2007-01-18
This classic by Paul Fussell should be required reading on most college campuses. His prose is impeccable. I have read every Fussell book I can get my hands on. He is one of the best.
Book Description
This is a masterful volume on remembrance and war in the twentieth century. Jay Winter locates the fascination with the subject of memory within a long-term trajectory that focuses on the Great War. Images, languages, and practices that appeared during and after the two world wars focused on the need to acknowledge the victims of war and shaped the ways in which future conflicts were imagined and remembered. At the core of the “memory boom” is an array of collective meditations on war and the victims of war, Winter says.
The book begins by tracing the origins of contemporary interest in memory, then describes practices of remembrance that have linked history and memory, particularly in the first half of the twentieth century. The author also considers “theaters of memory”—film, television, museums, and war crimes trials in which the past is seen through public representations of memories. The book concludes with reflections on the significance of these practices for the cultural history of the twentieth century as a whole.
Books:
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
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