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World War I was a bloodletting so vast and unprecedented that for a generation it was known simply as the Great War. Casualty lists reached unimagined proportions as the same ground -- places like Ypres and the Somme -- was fought over again and again. Other major bloody battles remain vivid in memory to this day: Gallipoli and the Battle of Jutland are but two examples. Europe was at war with itself, and the effect on Western civilization was profound, its repercussions felt even today. World War I saw the introduction of modern technology into the military arena: The tank, airplane, machine gun, submarine, and -- most lethal of all -- poison gas, all received their first widespread use. Professor Stokesbury analyzes these technological innovations and the war's complex military campaigns in lucid detail. At the same time he discusses the great political events that unfolded during the war, such as the Russian Revolution and the end of the Hapsburg dynasty, putting the social and political side of the war into the context of modern European history. A Short History of World War I is the first history of this war to be written in twenty years. It incorporates recent research and current thinking about the war in a highly readable and lively style.… (more)
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Few writers of history do a better job of explaining than does James L. Stokesbury. His prose is straightforward and easy to understand, and whatever topic he takes up, he chews on it until he has managed to make it make
But should World War I make sense? It was the result of an endless game of "chicken" between the great powers, with the strategies worked out by staff officers and low-level career bureaucrats who were never given any chance to see the big picture of what they were working on, and then executed by incompetents with no real experience in war and no understanding of the new weapons the scientists had given them. It is a tale of men (all of them were men) promoted by rigid rules and the ability to understand the system, because there was no good way to test for competence. Perhaps we shouldn't seek to make The Great War make sense; perhaps it was just a reflection of chaos theory.
And for all his lucidity, Stokesbury sometimes plays a little fast and loose with the data, or simply breezes past a difficult topic where more than one viewpoint is possible. In a book lacking in scholarly apparatus, this leaves the reader with little knowledge of just where the "trouble spots" are.
Do not misunderstand me; this is a brilliant history. It is unquestionably the most straightforward history of the War that I have ever read, and if I were going to recommend a "starter history," this would be it. But if you are going to do an in-depth study, you'll need more -- and, at times, you'll have to be prepared to abandon ideas Stokesbury has given you.