bruns_rick's Full Review: John Keegan - The First World War
On November 4, 1918, near the French-Belgian border, a British officer rallied his men as they struggled under raking German machine guns to cross the Sambre Canal: "You're doing very well, my boy!"
It was another ghastly morning in the Great War, the four-year explosion of violence that was arguably the most important event of the 20th century. As we turn to the 21st, World War I is fading from our consciousness. Its last surviving veterans are centenarians. Worse, we risk failing to learn its dire lessons, having never understood the many conflicts that coalesced into a worldwide barrage.
Now we can thank the British historian John Keegan for his brilliant and compelling account, The First World War. A deserving bestseller, from the first sentence, his narrative winds you in the tale of the "tragic and unnecessary conflict" that changed irrevocably every country that was drawn into its vortex.
Keegan explains clearly what few of us have ever understood: how and why the war started. Ominously today, the spark was Serbian nationalist resentment of the imposition of an outside power in the Balkans.
Trench warfare slaughtered millions. By comparison, all the U.S. losses in Vietnam would not equal a day's toll in the largest battles. Indeed, when the Americans came in, including this reviewer's grandfather, who was wounded in action, 100,000 died in less than a year.
Heroism matched the horror: think of Gallipoli. But the Great War also killed romantic notions of war, those grand illusions. After the Armistice, the arts reemerged transformed. Filmmakers recreated the war, trying to express its tragedy. The original "All Quiet on the Western Front," based on the brilliant German novel by Remarque, has never been surpassed.
This reviewer, however, would hyperlink Keegan's history with Jean Renoir's "The Grand Illusion." This French masterpiece has been restored and re-released on video and DVD, giving us a fresh opportunity to contemplate what is lost, and what must be preserved, in war.
That British officer, already a decorated hero, was killed on the bank of the Sambre canal. His name was Wilfred Owen, whose exquisite poetry, written at the front, is still in print. One week later, the Armistice was signed, but the seeds of greater wars were planted.
The highest praise greeted the hardcover publication of this engrossing, brilliant book - THE definitive story of the Great War, the war that created ...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
The First World War, a cataclysm that left ten million dead, created the modern world. It was a struggle of unprecedented ferocity that ended the rati...More at Buy.com
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