The Mammoth Book of Eyewitness World War I: Over 280 First-Hand Accounts of the War to End All Wars [Paperback]

Jon Lewis (Author), Jon E. Lewis (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 31, 2003

The Great War haunts the world still. It slaughtered a generation of young men; claimed limbs, wounded souls; drenched battlefields in blood; made sad legends of the Western Front, Gallipoli, and Jutland, and made heroes of poets; farmers, and factory workers. Clerks it made into Tommies, doughboys, or the Hun. And in this new Mammoth volume the voices of such eyewitnesses to history as these are heard again. So are the words of generals, statesmen, and kings. From the trenches in Flanders to the staff rooms of the Imperial German Army, with the Land Girls in England and U-boat crews in the Atlantic, alongside T. E. Lawrence in Arabia's desert and the Red Baron in the air—with a variety of extracts from letters, speeches, memoirs, diaries, and dispatches, this gripping collection covers each year and every facet of World War I. Among its wide range of witnesses are King George V, Robert Graves, Leon Trotsky, Erwin Rommel, Ernst Junger, Ernest Hemingway, American aviator Eddie Rickenbacker; and Winston S. Churchill. The pieces in this volume compose a stirring human drama of the conflict that redrew the map of the modern world and determined the political course of the twentieth century.

Product Details

• Paperback: 544 pages
• Publisher: Running Press (December 31, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786712880
• ISBN-13: 978-0786712885
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #171,363 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars good book on a bad time, December 14, 2005

By 

Konrad Baumeister - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Mammoth Book of Eyewitness World War I: Over 280 First-Hand Accounts of the War to End All Wars (Paperback)

One can read many books covering the campaigns and personalities of World War I and still come away with an incomplete picture of what the war was really about. The strategies, the national goals of the participants, and the political fallout - ushering in the destruction of empires that had lasted for hundreds of years, Bolshevism, fascism and Naziism, with all that was to come out of that - are all obviously important, but they do not reach down far enough into the basic and elemental experience of the common soldier in the field.

Jon E. Lewis has done a commendable job of editing over 180 first hand accounts of what the war was like, almost all of the pieces being written by average men and women who participated on every level of the conflict. The most poignant are from letters home, diary entries, and reminisces after the fact, coming from soldiers, nurses, and low-level commanders, telling of the hell of the trenches, the disease, the constant and maddening shelling, and the death, dismemberment, and maiming all around. The picture that arises out of the constant repitition of one account after another, is senseless, sickening, wasteful and pointless tragedy.

There are also excerpts of better-known memoires, particularly from Churchill, TE Lawrence, Foch, and finally, in a 33-page indulgence at the very end of the book, from Douglas Haig. Coming after 450 pages of slaughter and annihilation, so much of it caused by stupid and unimaginative "leadership" by such as Haig, this final summary of lessons learned and recap of the war effort as led by himself is enough to sicken one. It remains a mystery why this man was not lynched by his own soldiers.

The heros of the book are the average soldier in the field, bearing the brunt of the savagery day after day, dealing with conditions no animal could survive in, regardless of which side of the conflict they were on. For Lewis, there is essentially no difference in the experiences of a French vs a German vs an English vs a Russian soldier. Lewis does not deal in politics or assigning 'blame' to anyone, but rather deals at the micro level with the plight of everyman. The impact is crushing. One comes away from the book with a full and complete understanding of the old saying about the British army, 'lions led by donkeys.'

It's a powerful book and well worth the time invested. Lewis' spare editing and insightful though brief comments add to the wealth of material presented here as well, and overall has done an impressive job.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Book Review, March 4, 2011

By 

Tony Sullivan "Ayeblackbart" (TN) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Mammoth Book of Eyewitness World War I: Over 280 First-Hand Accounts of the War to End All Wars (Paperback)

I have been studying World War 1 and this book is an excellant source of 1st hand accounts. It is well written and well worth the money.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gripping. Very well written, April 23, 2010

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Reader in Palo Alto (Palo Alto, CA, USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Mammoth Book of Eyewitness World War I: Over 280 First-Hand Accounts of the War to End All Wars (Paperback)

Gripping account of the day-to-day lives of the soldiers in the trenches of WWI. It is inconceivable how these men and women could have put up with so much suffering and misery, year after year, without rebelling.