Customer Reviews

14-18: Understanding the Great War

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It took me a while to understand why I was so disappointed and uncomfortable with this book. The subject matter and chapter topics seemed intriguing; the writing style wasn't bad. Then I began to understand that the problem is with the authors' scholarship. In an attempt to reinterpret the war and make it meaningful for a contemporary audience, they used the inexperienced-author-survey style of writing, which takes an anecdote or two and turns this limited information into the basis for broad, sweeping conclusions that are inaccurate, or worse. As an amateur historian who understands the rules of scholarship, I was finding it impossible to suspend disbelief as I read through this series of interrelated but lightweight essays. Some of the information presented is indeed interesting, but the conclusions are not, and overall it does not hold together well as a book.

If you're looking for a recent WWI publication that is informative, well-researched and engaging, get Winston Groom's book, A Storm in Flanders.

This book is a series of essays on various topics related to World War I. It does not claim to be a thorough analysis of the war, but it does point in directions for further thought and research. I found the book to be quite fascinating. For example, there is a chapter about forced labor behind the front lines that was new material to me. Also, there is quite a bit about how the war was remembered and memorialized that is very intriguing. A major thesis of the book is that Paul Fussell's idea about a big cultural disconnect resulting from the Great War is wrong. The authors endeavor to show that, other than some avant-garde artists, most people continued to understand the world in traditional terms. Overall, a very stimulating book.

I enjoyed this work--a collection of essays which the authors state are portions of longer works in progress. Becker and Audoin-Rouzeau are directors of the WWI museum in France located near the Somme battlefield. Their intent is to explore areas that are often neglected in the big meta-narratives. I found the essays on the war fervor, eschatology and historicizing grief to be the best. As this is cultural history, perhaps it isn't quite as nuts and bolts as another reviewer would have liked, but I found the ideas presented to be certainly plausible. A nice complement to Modris Ekstein's The Rites of Spring.