The Mammoth Book of War Diaries and Letters: A collection of Letter and Diaries from the Battlefield (Mammoth Books) [Paperback]

Jon E. Lewis (Author)

Book Description

Series: Mammoth Books | Publication Date: November 18, 1998

A poignant collection of the private thoughts, secret fears, and eyewitness accounts of soldiers under enemy fire--from the Napoleonic Wars through the Vietnam conflict.

Product Details

• Paperback: 512 pages
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf; First Edition edition (November 18, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786705892
• ISBN-13: 978-0786705894
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.1 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,285,899 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Fine Volume Of First-Person History, Except..., December 30, 2005

By 

Notnadia (Currently upstairs.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Mammoth Book of War Diaries and Letters: A collection of Letter and Diaries from the Battlefield (Mammoth Books) (Paperback)

There's always something sad about reading the diaries and letters of combatants in a war zone. And there is always something poignant about reading the private words of those once living, who are now gone. I felt it when I read a book similar to this called "Eyewitness To History" but because this book's accounts dealt strictly with hostile occasions, I felt it more strongly here. A book like this touches many themes: the universality of human emotion, human desires, human fears. It also shows how much like we of today the people who lived long ago were. Minus the references to anachronistic armaments and military campaigns from history-text wars, the letters from a Revolutionary War soldier to his loved ones at home are nearly identical to those of the Vietnam War correspondences also reproduced here. Longing, loneliness, fear, suffering, these are conditions as old as our (or any other) species, and what I found myself taking away from my (not cover-to-cover but still extensive) reading of this work was less a contrasting of "then and now" but how often the ideas repeated. I found this book often sad. I would have thought I'd be immune to a record of a distant event composed by a person dust a century or more before my birth, but my reactions to some of what I read in here proved otherwise. Overall this is a fine reference book and a good read. It serves up a number of useful accounts of events, authored by persons contemporary to what was described. However, be mindful of what I wrote above: there is touching power here in the repetitive nature of human cruelty, war's evils, and the suffering--emotional and physical--that descends on soldiers, and those who care for them.