The First World War in the Middle East - Kristian Ulrichsen

The First World War in the Middle East - Ulrichsen, Kristian

Summary: A comprehensive history of the First World War in the Middle East.





Library Journal Reviews
Most studies of World War I focus on Europe, but Ulrichsen's (history, London Sch. of Economics) detailed and concise chronicle reminds readers of the broad impact of the war in the Middle East, deftly balancing military campaigns and social and political consequences. The author presents a precise exposition of the interests and engagement of the five imperial powers in the region and describes the costly military campaigns from the Caucasus to North East Africa and Palestine to Mesopotamia. In addition to heavy losses in men and resources for the warring powers, the local populations suffered immensely from battles, famine, disease, and destruction of property. This thorough study begins with historic background and concludes with an analysis of the postwar settlements as incipient national movements struggled with revived French and British colonial ambitions and the newly formed states in the region strained to create viable governments and economies. VERDICT Ulrichsen draws on a wide range of archival and monographic sources to present a comprehensive summary of this major theater of World War I and suggests how the war continues to influence developments in the region.

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The Last of the Doughboys - Richard Rubin

The Last of the Doughboys: The Forgotten Generation and Their Forgotten World War - Rubin, Richard

Summary: Collected over ten years, presents interviews with the last remaining World War I veterans, aged 101 to 113, to paint a picture of a time and a generation that, despite memorials and history lessons, is quickly fading away.




Booklist Reviews
There may be as many as a million surviving veterans of WWII, and their stream of memoirs continues, contributing to their place as part of the "Greatest Generation." But the last known American veteran of the Great War died in 2011. Determined to obtain and document the remembrances of the surviving "doughboys," journalist Rubin began an effort to locate and interview many of them a decade ago. The result is this fascinating and deeply moving collection of individual stories. These veterans, between the ages of 101 and 113, tell their stories in sometimes halting ways; but aided by the patience and prompting of Rubin, they provide a vivid picture of their wartime experiences as well as the vastly different American society from which they sprang. Most of these men came from rural backgrounds, and they used horsepower rather than tractors to plow fields. Some describe their shock at their first exposure to industrial-scale warfare, while others stepped easily into the beginnings of aerial combat. Some recall the comradeship, while others emphasize the terror of trench warfare. This is an important and masterful tribute to those who participated in a conflict that continues to shape the world today.

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Catastrophe 1914 - Max Hastings

Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War - Hastings, Max

Summary: A history of the outbreak of World War I from the breakdown of diplomacy to the dramatic battles that occurred before the war bogged down in the trenches.




Booklist Reviews
After writing almost exclusively about WWII, eminent historian Hastings (Inferno) turns his attention to the outbreak of WWI. Chronicling both the prelude to the war and its initial battles, he concentrates on events occurring between June 28, 1914, when Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo, and December 31, 1914, when soldiers on both sides of the conflict languished in trenches. Drawing on accounts generated from rarified diplomatic circles, seasoned military leaders, and ordinary citizens helplessly caught up in the international catastrophe, he examines the origins and the onset of the Great War in minute and vivid detail. Hastings, unlike many contemporary historians, refuses to indulge in any retrospective hand-wringing, concluding rather firmly that Germany and Austria must accept principal blame for the war and that it is an analytical and an ethical mistake to believe that it did not matter which side won. This compelling reexamination of the commencement of the conflict represents an important contribution to the scholarship of the "war to end all wars."

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Stubby the War Dog - Ann Bausum

Stubby the War Dog - Bausum, Ann

Summary: American soldier J. Robert Conroy befriended a stray dog with a stumpy tail while training to fight overseas in WWI. They bonded so closely that Conroy smuggled him to Europe, where Stubby accompanied Conroy's regiment on the Western Front, lending both his superior olfactory senses and amiable temperament to the war effort.


Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* The popularity of tales about dogs in war stems from the inherent poignancy—sweet, loyal, sad-eyed canines entered into the mad chaos of man-made destruction. But enter they occasionally do, and none more famously than Stubby. The homeless Boston terrier mix began frequenting a National Guard training ground in 1917, and along with copious food scraps, he found fellowship. With the help of his adopted master, 25-year-old Bob Conroy, Stubby learned to march and salute superiors. Conroy smuggled the clever mutt aboard a ship to France, and from there, Stubby became not only the good-luck charm of the 102nd Infantry but also a valued member, warning troops of gas attacks, barking before artillery shellings, and in his coup de grâce, capturing a German soldier by the seat of his pants. Bausum uses Stubby as a conduit to talk about WWI warfare in general, and indeed the dog does suffer injury, live through horror and fear, and return home a decorated hero (who meets no fewer than two presidents). The speedy story is surrounded by evocative period photos, including plenty of the goofy-faced Stubby, and leads up to his later careers as a vaudeville star and a football mascot, and his eventual taxidermied inclusion in the Smithsonian. A triumph on three fronts: educational, emotional, and inspirational. For older teens, suggest Bausman's adult title, Sergeant Stubby.

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The sleepwalkers - Christopher M. Clark

The sleepwalkers: how Europe went to war in 1914 - Clark, Christopher M.

Summary: An authoritative chronicle, drawing on new research on World War I, traces the paths to war in a minute-by-minute narrative that examines the decades of history that informed the events of 1914.


Booklist Reviews
The immense documentation of the origin of WWI, remarks historian Clark, can be marshaled to support a range of theses, and it but weakly sustains, in the tenor of his intricate analysis, the temptation to assign exclusive blame for the cataclysm to a particular country. Dispensing with a thesis, Clark interprets evidence in terms of the character, internal political heft, and external geopolitical perception and intention of a political actor. In other words, Clark centralizes human agency and, especially, human foibles of misperception, illogic, and emotion in his narrative. Touching on every significant figure in European diplomacy in the decade leading to August 1914, Clark underscores an entanglement of an official's fluctuating domestic power with a foreign interlocutor's appreciation, accurate or not, of that official's ability to make something stick in foreign policy. As narrative background, Clark choreographs the alliances and series of crises that preceded the one provoked by the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, but he focuses on the men whose risk-taking mistakes detonated WWI. Emphasizing the human element, Clark bestows a tragic sensibility on a magisterial work of scholarship. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.

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Castles of steel Britain, Germany, and the winning of the Great War at sea - Robert K Massie

Castles of steel Britain, Germany, and the winning of the Great War at sea - Massie, Robert K

Summary: The author continues his study of early twentieth-century military and naval history in an analysis of the confrontation between the two most powerful navies in the world as the British and Germans clashed at sea during World War I. - (Baker & Taylor)

Booklist Reviews
Massie has distinguished himself as a writer who pens enormous narrative histories so engaging that readers, losing themselves in the romance-novel story style, forget that they're reading nearly 1,000 pages of nonfiction. Dovetailing nicely with Dreadnaught (1991), which covers 40 years of British-German politics leading up to the Great War, his latest selection delves into politics by other means as the world's then two most powerful navies attempt to sink each other in the cold North Sea. While our cultural memory of World War I has largely been muddily entrenched in France and Belgium, this book shows that the sea was the war's most vital battleground, at a formative moment, adrift between Admiral Nelson-style high-seas adventure and modern aircraft-dominated naval combat. Yet while clearly well researched regarding technical specifications (gun apertures, water displacement, hull composition), Massie's tome is less a tale of technology and more of what he writes best: biographies of great men and complicated events. In this instance, it's the patient, thoughtful Admiral John Jellicoe, the man Winston Churchill said was "the only man on either side who could lose the war in an afternoon," and his foil, the flamboyant Admiral David Beatty, at sea against the wishes of his clingy aristocratic wife. The key German officers are also covered, and the war's climax at Jutland is as much their story. Unlike the British attempt to eliminate the German High Seas Fleet, this book is a decisive success. ((Reviewed September 15, 2003)) Copyright 2003 Booklist Reviews

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Evidence of things unseen - Marianne Wiggins

Evidence of things unseen - Wiggins, Marianne

Summary: Falling in love during the Second World War, a soldier and a glassblower's daughter eventually have a son, who in adulthood finds his own love affair impacted by fallout of the atomic age. 35,000 first printing. - (Baker & Taylor)



Booklist Reviews
Ray "Fos" Foster loves just three things in life: anything that lights up; his wife, Opal, the daughter of a glassblower; and his best friend, bemused, cynical Chance "Flash" Luttrell. Fos and Flash, who met in the trenches of World War I, start up a business as photographers in Knoxville, Tennessee, while Opal keeps the books. The first thing Opal discovers is that black sheep Flash is underwriting the whole enterprise with inherited wealth. But their congenial partnership ends badly when Flash falls in love with the 14-year-old daughter of a powerful politician and is jailed for violating the Mann Act. The Fosters head to the country, make a bust of farming, and take in a foundling they nickname Lightfoot. Fos' passion for science leads to work at a secret government facility, where the couple unknowingly contracts a fatal case of radiation poisoning. Things come full circle when Lightfoot turns 18 and, desperate for information about his parents, tracks down Flash. Leave it to Wiggins to make this quirky story of passion and science so hypnotic. The plotting is digressive, the themes are stark, the language is lush, and the idiosyncratic characters are entirely winning. A heartfelt tribute to the risks and rewards of following one's inner lights. ((Reviewed April 15, 2003)) Copyright 2003 Booklist Reviews

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July 1914 - Sean McMeekin

July 1914: countdown to war - McMeekin, Sean

Summary: Focusing on the weeks preceding the beginning of World War I, traces the efforts of a group of statesmen who used the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand--which was largely ignored--to trigger the outbreak of war.



Kirkus Reviews
McMeekin (History/Koç Univ.; The Russian Origins of the First World War, 2011, etc.) treads familiar ground but delivers a thoroughly rewarding account that spares no nation regarding the causes of World War I, although Germany receives more than its share of blame. Historians love to argue about who started World War I. Blaming Germany fell out of fashion soon after the Armistice succeeded, replaced by an interpretation that blamed everyone, exemplified by Barbara Tuchman's classic 1962 Guns of August. Within a decade, German scholars led another reversal back to their own nation's responsibility. Russia, huge and backward but rapidly modernizing, was the key. German military leaders led by Helmuth von Moltke, chief of the General Staff, believed Russia would attack Germany as soon as it felt confident of victory and that only a preventive war could save the nation. Austrian Archduke Ferdinand's murder by a Serbian terrorist proved a godsend. Austria yearned to crush Serbia, the pugnacious Balkan nation stirring up the Slav minority in Austria-Hungary's rickety empire. Von Moltke decided it was time to set matters right since Austria's cooperation was guaranteed. Russia's refusal to stop mobilizing in support of Serbia allowed him to warn that it was about to attack and that Germany had to strike first. It did so by invading Belgium on August 4, the act that made war inevitable. Tuchman remains irresistible, and David Fromkin's Europe's Last Summer (2004) is the best modern history, but McMeekin delivers a gripping, almost day-by-day chronicle of the increasingly frantic maneuvers of European civilian leaders who mostly didn't want war and military leaders who had less objection. Copyright Kirkus 2013 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.

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To end all wars - Adam Hochschild

To end all wars a story of loyalty and rebellion, 1914-1918 - Hochschild, Adam

Summary: World War I stands as one of history's most senseless spasms of carnage, defying rational explanation. In his riveting narrative, Hochschild brings it to life as never before while focusing on the long-ignored moral drama of the war's critics, alongside its generals and heroes.



Kirkus Reviews
From historian Hochschild (Bury the Chains: The First International Human Rights Movement, 2005, etc.), a selective history of the slaughter of innocents in World War I.

WWI effected the rupture of civilization on many levels—the efficacy of war machinery for mass murder, the collapse of colonial empires, the destabilization of the status quo by modern ideas such as socialism, women's suffrage and national self-determination—and the author skillfully harnesses these numerous and often contradictory currents. Hochschild focuses on Britain and many of the significant, prominent or otherwise typical protagonists whose lives and work underscored the cataclysmic changes in this era, from loyal aristocrats to pacifists and conscientious objectors. Among dozens of others, the characters include military leaders Douglas Haig and Alfred Milner, who led the war effort against the later aggressions of Germany and Austria-Hungary; Charlotte Despard, whose work with the Battersea poor prompted her to become a committed socialist and pacifist; and Rudyard Kipling, whose writing cast a nostalgic enchantment around the British empire. Hochschild plunges into the war year by year, 1914–18, when Britain swung from a country eager to fight the Germans, despite labor unrest, Irish agitation for home rule and antiwar demonstrations, to utterly stricken and bereft, with unbelievable numbers of young men cut down in the trenches. Britain had "declared that the very fundamentals of civilization were at stake," yet the war wrought unfathomable carnage and profound questions about its purpose. The lives of the author's many characters dovetail elegantly in this moving, accessible book.

An ambitious narrative that presents a teeming worldview through intimate, human portraits.
Copyright Kirkus 2011 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.

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1913 in search of the world before the Great War - Charles Emmerson

1913 in search of the world before the Great War - Emmerson, Charles

Summary: In this illuminating history, Charles Emmerson liberates the world of 1913 from this prelude to war narrative, and explores it as it was, in all its richness and complexity. Traveling from Europe's capitals, then at the height of their global reach, to the emerging metropolises of Canada and the United States, the imperial cities of Asia and Africa, and the boomtowns of Australia and South America, he provides a panoramic view of a world crackling with possibilities, its future still undecided, its outlook still open.

Kirkus Reviews
Most books about the year 1913 deal with the run-up to World War I. Emmerson (The Future History of the Arctic, 2010), fellow of the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, casts his net more widely, depicting life in two dozen great cities on the eve of the event that either ushered in the modern world or didn't (historians still debate this). The author has little new to say but says it well, and the further he travels from Europe, the more he illuminates areas unfamiliar to even educated readers. Parallels between eras a century apart are not in short supply. Observers in 1913 were already extolling a globalized planet, knit together by dazzling advances in technology. Democracy and capitalism seemed the wave of the future despite the disturbing spread of terrorist movements. The reigning superpower, Britain, was in relative decline, with Asia re-awakening and other rising powers flexing their muscles. In five chapters, Emmerson examines European capitals on a continent that took for granted that it was the center of the world, barely aware that the United States (four particular cities) was poised to take over that role. The hinterlands (Buenos Aires, Tehran, Jerusalem and others), colonies (Winnipeg, Bombay, Algiers and others) and Asian metropolises complete Emmerson's world tour. Although ostensibly about cities, the author also describes the country involved, often emphasizing a major figure--e.g., Woodrow Wilson in Washington, Gandhi in Durban, South Africa. Emmerson largely confines himself to history and national concerns with only a passing look at international politics on the verge of the Great War, but this is an intelligent picture of our world exactly 100 years ago. Copyright Kirkus 2013 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.

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Goliath - Scott Westerfeld

Goliath - Westerfeld, Scott

Series Title: Leviathan Trilogy

Summary: Alek and Deryn encounter obstacles on the last leg of their round-the-world quest to end World War I, and reclaim Alek's throne as prince of Austria.


Booklist Reviews
"Gadget-loving Clankers and biology-based Darwinists are still at war, but there is new hope for peace based on the threat of using Goliath, a powerful weapon developed by the famous inventor Nikola Tesla. Prince Alek believes Tesla's intentions are good, but Midshipman Deryn is skeptical. Goliath arrives safely in New York, but an attempted attack by German mechanical walkers ignites a series of events that may mean the end of a European city—and the Leviathan, with all her crew. The alternative-history steampunk extravaganza that began with Leviathan (2009) ends with this third volume, and it does not disappoint. Westerfeld stays true to his characters and the strength of his earlier story as he propels it to a satisfying close, and there are tantalizing bits in that wrapping up that could birth a terrific next series. (Fingers crossed, Mr. Westerfeld.) Secondary characters remain vivid, and the real stars of this entry may be lorises Bovril and Tazza. Once again, Thompson's evocative art enlivens the narrative." Copyright 2011 Booklist Reviews.

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Europe's last summer - David Fromkin

Europe's last summer: who started the Great War in 1914? - Fromkin, David

Summary: Draws on current scholarship to argue that hostilities that led to World War I were started intentionally, describing the negotiations and personalities of key leaders that contributed to the failure of diplomatic efforts.


Booklist Reviews
/*Starred Review*/ Fromkin's answer to the question posed in his subtitle is succinct: Helmuth von Moltke, imperial Germany's army chief in 1914. In his clearly delineated argument, Fromkin addresses alternative theories about the cause of World War I, but he returns to the decision chain of a small number of officials in Berlin and Vienna. Their destruction of key evidence hampers the precise reconstruction of their actions as does, Fromkin maintains, historians' confusion about what the Germans were licensing in agreeing to whatever chastisement Vienna decided to deliver upon Serbia, on the pretext of avenging the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. In contrast to theorists of rigid alliances, to whom the notorious "blank check" initiated events almost beyond human control, Fromkin arraigns the actions of Moltke and his colleagues, especially in late July 1914, when the procrastinating Austrians had yet to crush Serbia in war, as Moltke expected. Hijacking the bollixed-up situation, he overrode Kaiser Wilhelm II's resistance, Fromkin concludes, to a deliberate instigation of a second war against Russia and France. The boldness of Fromkin's argument is enough to warrant attention, but his fluidity of expression guarantees a large audience for this book. ((Reviewed February 15, 2004)) Copyright 2004 Booklist Reviews.

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Maisie Dobbs: a novel - Jacqueline Winspear

Maisie Dobbs: a novel - Winspear, Jacqueline

Summary: In her first case, private detective Maisie Dobbs must investigate the reappearance of a dead man who turns up at a cooperative farm called the Retreat that caters to men who are recovering their health after World War I. A first novel. - (Baker & Taylor)



Library Journal Reviews
From its dedication to the author's paternal grandfather and maternal grandmother, who were both injured during World War I, to its powerful conclusion, this is a poignant and compelling story that explores war's lingering and insidious impact on its survivors. The book opens in spring 1929 as Maisie Dobbs opens an office dedicated to "discreet investigations" and traverses back and forth between her present case and the long shadows cast by World War I. What starts out as a plea by an anxious husband for Maisie to discover why his wife regularly lies about her whereabouts turns into a journey of discovery whose answers and indeed whose very questions lie in a quiet rural cemetery where many war dead are buried. In Maisie, Winspear has created a complex new investigator who, tutored by the wise Maurice Blanche, recognizes that in uncovering the actions of the body, she is accepting responsibility for the soul. British-born but now living in America, first novelist Winspear writes in simple, effective prose, capturing the post-World War I era effectively and handling human drama with compassionate sensitivity while skillfully avoiding cloying sentimentality. At the end, the reader is left yearning for more discreet investigations into the nature of what it means to feel truth. Highly recommended.-Caroline Hallsworth, City of Greater Sudbury, Ont. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.


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Behemoth - Scott Westerfeld

Behemoth - Westerfeld, Scott
Series Title: Leviathan Series

Summary: Continues the story of Austrian Prince Alek who, in an alternate 1914 Europe, eludes the Germans by traveling in the Leviathan to Constantinople, where he faces a whole new kind of genetically-engineered warships.


Publishers Weekly Reviews
The action is nonstop in Westerfeld's thrilling sequel to last year's Leviathan--fans of that book won't be disappointed. It's 1914 in the author's alternate world, the great powers are moving toward full-scale war, and Deryn, still posing as a boy, has found a place as a midshipman aboard the gigantic, living British airship Leviathan as it sails east on its secret mission to Istanbul. When Austria-Hungary enters the conflict, her friend Alek, the runaway heir to that empire, realizes that he must escape from the airship to avoid imprisonment, giving Deryn "a chance not just to help Alek but to change the course of the whole barking war." Battles abound between eccentric fighting machines and even stranger fabricated "beasties" as Deryn and Alek prove their courage and ingenuity while putting themselves in harm's way. This exciting and inventive tale of military conflict and wildly reimagined history should captivate a wide range of readers. Thompson's evocative and detailed spot art (as well as the luridly gorgeous endpapers) only sweetens the deal. Ages 12–up. (Oct.)

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Leviathan - Scott Westerfeld

Leviathan - Westerfeld, Scott
Series Title: Leviathan Series
Summary: In an alternate 1914 Europe, fifteen-year-old Austrian Prince Alek, on the run from the Clanker Powers who are attempting to take over the globe using mechanical machinery, forms an uneasy alliance with Deryn who, disguised as a boy to join the British Air Service, is learning to fly genetically-engineered beasts.



Booklist Reviews
Instead of the Victorian era most often found in the steampunk genre, Westerfeld sets his new series in a Europe hovering on the edge of World War I. The ingenious premise is that Europe is divided not only into traditional historical camps, but also into Darwinists, who genetically manipulate animal "life-strands" into beasts and even whole self-contained ecosystems with wondrous capabilities, and Clankers, whose imposing constructions of metal and gears are a marvel of technological wizardry. Deryn Sharp, from Darwinist England, disguises herself as a boy to enlist on the Leviathan, a flying whale-ship, while Prince Alek, recently orphaned son of Archduke Ferdinand, finds himself on the run in a sort of walking Clanker tank. The plot is boosted almost entirely by exciting and sometimes violent fight sequences, but reading about (and seeing, thanks to Thompson's ample, lavish, and essential illustrations) the wildly imaginative creatures and machines provides nearly as much drive. Fans of Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines (2003) or Kenneth Oppel's Airborn (2004) will be right at home in Westerfeld's alternate reality. Copyright 2009 Booklist Reviews.

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Goodbye to all that - Robert Graves

Goodbye to all that - Graves, Robert

Summary: In 1929 Robert Graves went to live abroad permanently, vowing 'never to make England my home again'. This is his superb account of his life up until that 'bitter leave-taking': from his childhood and desperately unhappy school days at Charterhouse, to his time serving as a young officer in the First World War that was to haunt him throughout his life. It also contains memorable encounters with fellow writers and poets, including Siegfried Sassoon and Thomas Hardy, and covers his increasingly unhappy marriage to Nancy Nicholson. "Goodbye to All That", with its vivid, harrowing descriptions of the Western Front, is a classic war document, and also has immense value as one of the most candid self-portraits of an artist ever written.

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Regeneration - Pat Barker

Regeneration - Barker, Pat

Summary: Stressed by the war, Siegfried Sassoon is sent to Craiglockhart Hospital, where his views challenge the patriotic vision of Dr. William Rivers - (Baker & Taylor)


Kirkus Reviews
In this fact/fiction hybrid, Barker (Union Street, 1983, etc.) turns from the struggle for survival of northern England working- class folk to the struggle back to sanity by British officers unhinged by WW I trench warfare. Craiglockhart War Hospital, a grim psychiatric facility outside Edinburgh, is the setting. The framework is the arrival of Siegfried Sassoon at Craiglockhart in the summer of 1917, and his discharge back to France in November. Sassoon is treated by the eminent neurologist (and Army captain) William Rivers, whose job is to restore his damaged warriors to fighting condition. Sassoon is a relatively easy assignment. Despite his public statement protesting the war, Sassoon is no pacifist; this complex poet feels at home in the Army and is an exceptionally courageous officer, beloved by his men, to whom he feels a blood-debt that can be paid only by his return. For all the sparring between Sassoon and Rivers, only a hair separates them, for the latter is also a man of enormous integrity, profoundly troubled by the horrors his patients must endure. And it is these horrors (not the clipped exchanges of Sassoon and Rivers) that linger in the mind: Burns's vomiting nightmares caused by a mouthful of decomposing German flesh; Prior's being rendered mute after handling a human eye. At the center is Rivers, a model therapist, whose unstinting support may give even the wretched Burns a chance at a normal life. Barker has also provided some workmanlike off-base romance for Prior, her one developed fictional character; but the heart of the work, where the big fish swim, is Rivers's consciousness, his insights into front- line behavior enriched by his anthropological straining. Don't look here for the dramatic sweep of a war novel; instead, you get a scrupulously fair reconstruction of Craiglockhart, plus a moving empathy for both doctors and patients. The extent of that empathy earns Barker's work a place on the shelf of WW I literature. Copyright 1999 Kirkus Reviews

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