About book A World Undone: The Story Of The Great War, 1914 To 1918 (2006)
My wife and I are expecting a baby any day now. Any moment, really. And I thought about that as I finished this book: how it might be the last book I ever read. Ever. At least the last book that doesn’t involve talking bears or talking cows or talking bean-pods or whatever talking creature populates the books that babies read these days. Lately, I’ve been obsessed with World War I. A few weeks ago, while at Barnes & Noble, I was looking for a good book on World War I, fully acknowledging that World War I might be the last frivolous historical obsession I ever have. Ever. Other than an obsession with the last years of my carefree youth. So there I was, in the book aisle, facing my reality, pondering my last historical obsession, and the last book with which to indulge it. I chose G.J. Meyer’s A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914-1918. At first glance, it doesn’t have a lot to recommend it. For one, I’d never heard of it before, in any mention of single-volume histories of the war (well-known entries include books by John Keegan, SLA Marshall, and Martin Gilbert). The author, too, was mysterious to me, an enigma veiled by initials.Furthermore, one of the cover blurbs proudly states that this book is a top-choice of the “resident historian” of the History Channel. I’m not even sure what that’s supposed to mean. What exactly does the resident historian do? Does he find the ice roads for each season of Ice Road Truckers? The last time I tried to watch the History Channel, they served up an all-day marathon of Pawn Stars, which not only has nothing to do with history, but actually works against it (pawn shops are to history what Wal-Mart developments are to Civil War Battlefields). In short, I was about to put the book down and go about my merry way. But then, obviously, I bought it instead. The story behind that isn’t important (in short: it involves me talking my wife out of a B&N gift card in exchange for cleaning the bathtub). It was a fortunate choice. I do not want this to be the last book I read on World War I. I do not want this to be the last book I read on any subject. However, it is a great first book to read on World War I. I should know, since this is my second one-volume history of WWI in a row, and it is far more enjoyable than the first. (No offense, John Keegan). Being on Goodreads, I’ve gotten some really good recommendations on WWI books. Books that cover everything from battlefields to economics to cultural repercussions. Many of them, though, seem really intimidating. And the thing about the Great War is that it’s already an intimidating subject. It’s easy to get turned off before you get started, and move on to the relatively simpler milieu of World War II: Germans = bad; Americans = good; and Russians = shrug. A World Undone is a book for the masses. It is expansive, yet accessible; detailed, but clear; and entertaining as hell. It doesn’t come with Keegan’s pedigree. It does not bog down in detailed analyses. If you already know a lot about the subject, you probably don’t need to read this book; it does not require heavy mental lifting. It is, first and foremost, a narrative rooted in humanity. A major appeal to this book is its structure. Any one-volume history of World War I must deal with a crucial calculation: scope verses space. A great many things happened during the war, to a great many people, in places all over the globe and under the sea. Moreover, many of these things were happening simultaneously. An author facing such a calculation usually chooses between two options: maintaining a chronological narrative; or compartmentalizing the narrative (e.g., a chapter on the Western Front, a chapter on naval battles, etc.). Meyer utilizes a hybrid approach. For the most part, he tells the story of World War I, from Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s murder to the Armistice of November, 11, 1918, in chronological fashion. While this could potentially be confusing, he pays incredibly close attention to shifting smoothly from theater to theater. By doing this, he is able to draw important connections between the Western Front and Eastern Front, and how the distribution of manpower and materiel dictated strategy. The war formed a huge web, and pulling on one strand inevitably caused all other strands to tremble. (It also helps that Meyer mostly ignores lesser theaters, such as the battles in Africa. The areas of concentration are the Western and Eastern Fronts, and the Dardanelles, which is how it should be in a book for the vox populi).After each narrative chapter, Meyer inserts a Background chapter, complete with its own font (sans-serif). These sections cover topics that can’t easily be inserted into the main narrative, or that add depth and dimension to the overall story. There are Background sections on the Serbs, the Junkers, the Ottoman Empire, war poetry, airplanes and tanks, Lawrence of Arabia, and the Armenian Genocide. These short chapters tended to be among the most fascinating and lively in the book. For instance, in writing about the Ottoman Turks, Meyer relates how Prince Mustafa, son of Suleiman the Magnificent, was executed by five assassins “whose tongues had been slit and eardrums broken so that they would hear no secrets and could never speak of what they saw.” (Though one wonders how they were given their commands to kill). Meyer did not set out to break new ground. He does not attempt to reinterpret World War I. He has no particular axe to grind. He is not like John Mosier, arguing that the Americans won the war, or like Niall Ferguson, arguing that the British started it. To the contrary, he stays on the beaten path. Further, this is not a scholarly work. If you look in the notes, you will see a heavy reliance on secondary sources. This is not a criticism. In his introduction, Meyer’s stated intent to is write a user-friendly history of the war. He accomplishes this. His writing style is not elegant, yet it is admirably clean and readable, especially after all the trouble I had with Keegan’s clause-ridden, stuttering sentences. He does a good job segueing between the god’s-eye-view and the recollections of the common soldiers (though I wish he’d used block-quotes when excerpting long passages; I’ve always been a believer that three or more excerpted sentences deserve a block-quote). In describing battles, Meyer avoids getting drowned in the Roman numeral soup of Armies and Corps and Divisions. For the most part, with some important exceptions, he doesn’t try to detail the individual movements of particular armed bodies of troops. Instead, he takes a macro approach, describing the cumulative effect of a particular offensive, rather than attempting to parse its component parts. When reading Keegan, I decried the lack of maps. Here, there are even less maps, and they are only nominally more helpful. But since Meyer doesn’t base his narrative on exhaustive recitations of the order of battle, more and better maps aren’t really required. In a book like this, for example, a competent presentation of the purpose of the Somme offensive (its strategic value; its tactical value; its psychological value) is far more important than a meticulous recounting of which regiment attacked across which farmer’s field.I’m wary of overselling this book, simply because it came to me out of the blue, and since it enters a literary field studded with famous titles. On the other hand, I don’t want to undersell it either. A World Undone isn’t exactly Trench Warfare for Dummies. And even though I admittedly don’t know a whole lot about World War I, I do read a whole lot of history. This is a great primer on the subject. Most people can get through life without reading any books on the First World War. But if you want to read just one, and you want that experience to be painless, nay, to be enjoyable, I present to you this book, which comes with the completely worthless imprimatur of me, and the more worthless imprimatur of the History Channel. Further, if you are one of those people who have had an awakening – if you have, like me, woken up and said to yourself, I must know everything about World War I – then this is a wonderful place to start, a book to help you get your footing. Having read this, and yes, John Keegan’s book as well, I feel like I have the roadmap to journey deeper into the cataclysm of the Great War. That is, if I ever have the time, which I probably won’t. The only journey I’ll be taking will be into the cataclysm of diapers and not sleeping, but that is beside the point, and in no way is meant to compare babies to world wars.
At just over 650 pages, the book reads smoothly and quickly. Meyer writes with a simple elegance, his words crisp with detail and easy to grasp. This is due in large part to his background as a journalist rather than a professional historian. The book's chapters structure lends well to his overall theme of understanding the war through gaining knowledge on its background. Each of the 36 chapters of detail are supported by a corresponding chapter of background information. For example, the book opens with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip and the subsequent events between Austrio-Hungary and Serbia. To accompany this chapter, Meyer offers background on the Serbs. The combination works very well throughout the book, and sheds light on some topics other authors move quickly over.This is not necessarily a new and original account of that war, but rather a more fluid and readable account than perhaps other more scholarly books. You never get too bogged down in military tactics and movements or likewise thrown into political and diplomatic maneuvering, though these aspects are given rightful attention. Meyer doesn't use footnotes in the actual body of the text; he cites his sources at the end. This has it's advantages and disadvantages. He also seems to rely on secondary sources, but as mentioned, this isn't meant to be a revisionist account or a scholarly account incorporating a wide array of recently uncovered primary sources and etc.What really came through to me was this notion referred to as the `cult of the offensive', i.e., the belief that a major attack by either the allied or central powers' armies, even against entrenched, seemingly impregnable defenses, would bring immediately decisive results or victory. But what struck me the most was the number of casualties incurred from these offensive battles such as the Somme and others along the Western Front especially, though the results from the Eastern Front were just as horrendous in many instances. It didn't seem to matter how many thousands of men died, or even if the attack failed, they still planned for further attacks (and I'm mainly concerned with the British and French leaders here). There were a few commanders who were more scrupulous with the lives of their men, commanders like Petain for example, but this blind faith in offensive tactics that resulted in such horrific casualty figures never deterred the disciples of this offensive style.Meyer offers illuminating portraits of some of the major political and military leaders, especially with figures like chief German strategist and near dictator Erich von Ludendorff and Kaiser Wilhelm II from the Central Powers to figures ranging from British General Douglas Haig and Tsar Nicholas on the Entente side, but many others from both sides are given ample attention as well. The ordeals endured by the common soldier come through powerfully and poignantly, as does the state of the home front on both sides as the war continued and the hardships increased (though not on the same scale for all countries). He also delves into the complex problems of the Ottoman Empire, where being in a position of power in the Ottoman Empire was a lot like playing King of the Hill: Everyone wanted you off the throne so they could be the target of assassination plots and political upheaval. Most accounts of the war tend to skim over all that.In all, a great book.
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There is no single-volume book which can ever do justice to any war, and this is no exception. However, of the books I've read, or tried to read, about WWI, I really recommend this one as the place to start.Meyer covers the "war" part of the war, which may not sound too fascinating, but he makes it so interesting it's hard to put down. First, he takes the war from before it starts to its end. He discusses the various arguments about why it actually started. Secondly, he is not heavy on military terminology: rifles are rifles, artillery is artillery, etc. One of the problems I've had with other books which deal with the military aspects is the intense detail with which military equipment is labelled. It's of no significance to me whether it's an Enfield rifle, and only serves to confuse me if I don't remember which country used those. So, Meyer's generic approach is very welcome.Third, the structure of the book is such that the main narrative deals with the political and military progress of the war, but in between are chapters dealing with background, be it political, biographical, cultural, military, etc. For example, he has background chapters on the Junkers, the Hohenzollerns, the Habsburgs, the Romanovs, trench warfare, T. E. Lawrence, etc. As each chapter is short anyway, it's not only helpful to have the background chapters fill in what you may not know (or review it if you do), but it breaks up the war into digestible parts before you move on.Another aspect which makes the book so readable is that in writing about the war, he discusses the personalities of the major players, be they political or generals or chiefs of staff or monarchs. It gives a narrative flow by making the reader want to know what happened next, and if so-and-so ended up being right, wrong, shoved out of power, etc.I had initially thought this book was going to be more of a cultural history of the time, but even once I discovered it wasn't, it still ended up being a page-turner for me. I was delighted to finally be able to put into a chronological context the battles of WWI I knew the names of, but couldn't tell you much about, nor of their significance. I wish this book had been out years ago when I was first beginning to read about WWI. You can quibble with a few of his interpretations, but for getting a readable and interesting overview of WWI, this is the place to start.
—Libyrinths
I admittedly read very little non-fiction, I unfortunately get bogged down in the detail and lack of story and thus restrict myself to specific subjects that I find fascinating. WWI is one of those.I didn't realize that I knew so little about WWI until I read this book.It seems impossible to understand WWII without knowing this war and the politics that started and ended it. For a war that had and has so many repercussions for Europe, it amazes me that I didn't know more. The author did a fantastic job of creating an overall history of WWI. While I'm sure the history of this war could only be fully and comprehensively told in a minimum 6 volume set of 800 page books, this one is a very good option for a shorter version.
—Dawn
"War is the work of the devil." So says one of the generals of WWI, although I couldn't find the quote as I went back and looked for it in this 715 page history, so I can't even report for sure who said it. It doesn't really matter, though, because as I continued to study this book, if I got one thing from it, it would be that war is undoubtedly and indisputably Hell with a capital H. Living all my life hearing about WWI and II, I have never really been able to put the pieces together to make sense of it all. Several months ago I went on a WWII binge, reading a lot of books on it until I think I finally have at least a working knowledge of what it was all about. It seemed to follow that I then learn about WWI, and so I have been. This book offers a great starting point for the study of that war. I tried reading other books first, but got hopelessly lost. This book, by virtue of the way that is written, made it very accessible to me, and now I can study some of those other books with a degree of knowledge that will help me add to my understanding. I really like the format of the book, particularly the short intermediary background chapters that shed so much light on the core story of the war. It helped so much with understanding the how and the why of the war, and events that it precipitated.So in a nutshell, outside of the logistics and battles and armaments and all of that usual and necessary war stuff, here is what I learned. This war was fought for the flimsiest of reasons, if in fact there was a reason at all. Nations can act very much like two-year-old children fighting over an inexpensive toy. Over 9.5 million soldiers lost their lives over these petty squabbles, not to mention many more millions who were moderately to severely wounded, nor the millions of civilians who who were wounded or killed. The Germans were justified in being outraged at the way they were treated in the Treaty of Versailles, particularly by Woodrow Wilson, and we all know where that lead, or at least I hope we do. I hope many more of us are willing to put forth the effort to learn the truth about war in the hopes of avoiding it in the future. The way things appear to me right now, it seems that we are going down this same path, and that scares me. No wonder the philosopher has said, "Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it."
—Sher
