Drowning In Books About World War I
It is a truth universally acknowledged (at least in the circles I hang out in) that major historical anniversaries are celebrated not only with documentaries, blog posts and re-enactments, but with the publication of Big Fat History Books. It makes perfect sense from the point of view of writer and publishing house: the centennial of World War I is a ready-made if slightly crowded PR hook for a new book about the war.
From the point of view of a historically inclined reader, blogger, and occasional reviewer, it can be a tad overwhelming. A solid phalanx of World War I books has taken over my TBR shelf, shoving their way ahead of all the other fascinating unread books piled up in my office.* Old favorites are demanding their fair share of attention. Then there are the novels. And the poetry. In short, I could spend the next year reading and writing about nothing but World War I until next June, when the Battle of Waterloo will demand its share of attention.*** But I won’t. I’d get bored. And worse, so would you.
So I’ve decided on an interim step. Below are mini-reviews of three new WWI books that have caught my imagination. I’ve read enough of each of them to feel secure in recommending them to your attention–and enough to know I want to finish them.
Philip Jenkins. The Great and Holy War: How World War I Became a Religious Crusade.
Possibly the oddest the WWI books to appear in my mailbox so far, The Great and Holy War looks at the role religion played in shaping the course of the war–and the peace. Jenkins looks at how the powers involved-Christian and Muslim alike-used the rhetoric of crusade, holy war, apocalypse and Armageddon. He considers the Angel of Mons, the Christmas Truce, the legend that dead French soldiers rose to fight alongside their comrades, and the British push to conquer Jerusalem in the Palestine campaign. This is fascinating stuff.
Sean McMeekin. July 1914: Countdown to War.
This is a gripping account of more familiar ground: a day-by-day political history of the weeks between the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the beginning of World War I. I picked up July, 1914 with an initial feeling of “ho-hum”, then was caught by the quality of the story-telling. It’s a cliche to say that a work of history reads like a novel. In this case, it’s true.
Geoffrey Wawro. A Mad Catastrophe: The Outbreak of World War I and the Collapse of the Habsburg Empire.
I’ve been fascinated for a long time by the failed melting-pot of the Austro-Hungarian empire. A Mad Catastrophe is an in-depth examination of how the empire’s decline at the end of the nineteenth century set the stage for Sarajevo and the impact of its weakness on the eastern front. If you’re interested in the decline and fall of empires, this one’s for you.
*Actually, they piled up in my old office. In my splendid new office they are arrayed neatly on shelves, alphabetized by the author’s last name. This makes things easier to find if I know the title or name of the author. It’s still a trick to locate a book when I know only that “memory” is in the title and the author’s first name is Paul.**
**At this point a clever use of Google is the only solution.
***Save the date: June 18, 1815.
The Nile
I
n The Nile:A Journey Downriver Through Egypt’s Past and Present, popular Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson leads the reader on a historical travelogue that moves from Aswan, home of the river’s First Cataract, to Cairo’s Gezira Island, from Paleolithic rock drawings to the Arab Spring.
The voyage that shapes The Nile is not simply metaphorical. Wilkinson floats down the river on a dahabiyah–a large luxury boat descended from the royal barges of the pharaohs. Aware that he is simply the latest in the historical line of travelers drawn to Egypt by its climate and its ancient civilizations, Wilkinson engages with their commentary as well as his own observations, creating a palimpsest of Nile voyages in the process. (Ancient Greek historian Herodotus and 19th-century British journalist Amelia Edwards are particular favorites.)
Because Wilkinson organizes his work by geography rather than chronology, his narrative is anecdotal almost to the point of stream of consciousness. His combination of scholarship and storytelling allows him to draw unexpected relationships through time. The ruins at Kom Ombo lead to a discussion of the crocodile god, Sobek, then on to ancient Egyptian tales about the dangers of crocodiles, a modern Crocodile Museum, and the impact of both 19th-century Western tourism and the Aswan Dam on the crocodile population in Egypt. Occasionally such temporal leaps are disorienting, but for the most part they are illuminating. Once a reader has learned to navigate the rapids, The Nile is worth the effort.
This review previously appeared in Shelf Awareness for Readers.
In Which I Give Away A Copy of Nick Lloyd’s Hundred Days
As those of you who hang out in history-land know, the centennial of World War I is just around the corner. So far I’ve resisted the temptation to add to the flow of WWI-related blog posts, tweets, and images.* But the pile of books to review and the list of things I want to talk about is growing. So brace yourself, here we go.
* * *
In the comments to my post last week on historical periods, friend/relative/reader Carol Hallock broadened the definition of historical figures to include, well, everyone:
“…we can have the same realization about the general Mr. and Ms. walking down the street, but their “big experiences” maybe never made headline news or history books. Everybody is a walking story.” **
Nick Lloyd, the author of Hundred Days: The Campaign That Ended World War I, would agree. *** The book is inspired, in part, by his great-uncle, Tom Cotterill, who died at the age of nineteen only six weeks before the Armistice as part of the final campaigns of 1918. Visiting Cotterill’s grave in the British cemetery at Neuville-Bourjonval, Lloyd found himself “filled with a powerful urge to write a story of those final days; to do all that I could to bring him home.” From my perspective, he succeeds.
The “Hundred Days” is a British term referring to the often ignored period from the Battle of Amiens on August 8, 1918, through the Armistice on November 11, also known as the “Advance to Victory”. **** Lloyd begins his account in July, with the Second Battle of the Marne and follows the final campaigns in France and Belgium step by bloody step. Despite the British roots of his title, Lloyd does not look at the campaigns solely from the British, or even the Allied, perspective. Instead he analyses the battles from the point of view from each of the main warring sides, big picture and close-up alike. His accounts of each battle are both lively and clear (though I wish the maps were better). But the real strength of Lloyd’s work is his treatment of the experience of the war from an individual perspective. He paints vivid portraits of the character and motivations of the various commanders and draws on a variety of first hand accounts from men at all levels on both sides of the front. (His portrayal of the disintegration of German morale and discipline and the deprivations on the German home front are particularly powerful.) In a very real way, he has given us Tom Cotterill’s experience of the final campaigns of World War I: “the shattering bombardments; the storm of machine-gun fire; the sight of hundreds of dead and wounded; the exhaustion of endless marches; the glow of burning French villages; the comradeship and fear.”
Hundred Days is well worth the read. And since I recieved two copies, I have one to share. If you want your name to go into the hat, make a comment here on the blog, send me an e-mail, or comment on my Facebook post on or before noon CST, June 28.
*I don’t open Christmas presents early either.
**Carol’s comments encapsulate the idea behind what was called “the new social history” when I was in college. You can see the rest of what she had to say here.
***Why yes, I am starting my posts about WWI with the end of the war.
****Technically 95 days, but who’s counting?