Skip to main content

The Pity of War

By

Thinking of Armistice Day, this book came to mind.  I believe it was the subject of one of the NYT reading groups way back when, but I didn't read it at the time.  Here is an interview with Margaret MacMillan from 2002.  Another book is Niall Ferguson's The Pity of War, which explores the economic as well as military impact of the war, focusing more on the origins of the war than its aftermath.  Looks like he explores the war more from the British perspective.

World War I has pretty much faded into the background, but in reading The Warrior and the Priest I find my interest renewed and look forward to any other suggestions for reading material.

Comments

  1. RickNovember 12, 2010 at 2:02 PM

    Two other pretty good books are John Keegan's "The First World War" and Barbara Tuchman's "The Guns of August."

    ReplyDelete
  2. avrdsNovember 12, 2010 at 3:19 PM

    People speak very highly of Tuchman's book, but I've never read it. I think I picked it up after reading 1919, which is a great book. I'd happily read that again if there's interest. As is Over Here by David (?) Kennedy -- about the effects on the U.S.

    And when I asked a colleague about more WWI books, I was pointed to Dos Passos. I read one of the three in the USA series, which was brilliant in its way.

    I'm about to look at a book about WWI in the Middle East -- although this looks like more of a military history. What 1919 makes clear is how they carved up the Middle East and gave it to all the European countries as "mandates."

    I'm still reading about labor and "migrations." I rarely read two books at once, and it's probably a mistake. But these are both worth reading through to the end, so am sticking with them both. Then I'll check out this new WWI history.

    ReplyDelete
  3. James FergusonNovember 12, 2010 at 3:26 PM

    Thanks for pointing out Tuchman, rick. I think she also wrote a book about The Zimmerman Telegram.

    ReplyDelete
  4. RickNovember 12, 2010 at 4:00 PM

    http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/zimmermann/

    See the National Archives link above for the telegram itself, both before and after it was deciphered.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...
230 comments
Read more

The People Debate the Constitution

By
As Pauline Maier describes in Ratification , there was no easy road in getting the Constitution ratified.  After 10 years of living together as a loosely knit confederation, a few forward thinking men decided that the Articles of Confederation no longer worked and it was time to forge a Constitution.  Washington would not go until he could be assured something would come of the convention and that there would be an august body of gentlemen to carry the changes through.  But, ultimately Maier describes it was the people who would determine the fate of the new Constitution. This is a reading group for Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution 1787-1788 .  The book has been well received by fellow historians like Jack Rakove , among others.  Maier has drawn from a wealth of research piecing together a story that tells the arduous battle in getting the Constitution ratified.  A battle no less significant than that Americans fought for independence.
166 comments
Read more