World War I Reader

by Michael S. Neiberg

The World War I Reader by various. New York UP,2006

Genres: History, World War I, Nonfiction

Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Michael S. Neiberg is the Stimson Chair of the Department of National Security and Strategy at the US Army War College. He has also taught at the U.S. Air Force Academy and the University of Southern Mississippi.

Reviews

[Kim]

“Accessible.” This book would be best used for a course on the War, and even then, sections assigned as the main course progressed. Some selections are quite better than others - some struggle to get to whatever point they were trying to make. I would say that the strongest section was section II, which dealt directly with soldiers of the war. I would also consider this an extremely broad overview that doesn’t hit all potential niches of interest, but may contain a sentence or two to encourage further research topics (race relations during the war, the roles of women, class).

[Bryan Whitehead]

Overall this is a good set of primary and secondary accounts of the title subject. But be aware of the text’s limitations. As most perspectives are subjective and limited in scope, this isn’t the best choice for one’s first ever reading about the war. And several entries work better as artifacts than as education, particularly those where the writing is so terrible that it verges on unreadable. However, if you already have a firm grasp of the bigger picture, these snapshots from many particular angles prove fascinating more often than not.

[Jarred Goodall]

Dr. Neiberg puts together a fascinating, useful collection of resources in one volume. The resources take one in depth into the causes and effects of World War I, providing many angles that most people do not think about.

[Mike]

This book is providing some primary source background as I reflect on World War I in this, it's 100th anniversary year. I came to appreciate the horrors of the trenches and traumatic impact of the war that everyone thought would be over by Christmas 1914 while reading The Last Lion's account of Winston Churchill's WWI service. My grandfather was a 32-year-old father of four in 1917 and so never went to war. My dad was a boy of 12. His youthful war fervor was acted out in the drills performed by his Boy Scout troop mimicking the doughboys over there. I'm looking forward to reading what contemporaries were writing in the War years, and later this year, visiting the WWI museum in Kansas City. More to follow...

[Amy]

I will admit I did a lot of skimming in this book as I got to the end. If I had had more time to focus on it, I would have joyfully read through the whole thing. I enjoyed the exerpts that were in this book.
My complaint is that I would have much preferred that at the beginning of each excerpt would be an explanation of what you're about to read (when it was written, etc) and if it's a translation (who translated it and when).
Some exerpts were confusing and I had to go back to the introduction to figure out what the heck I was reading about.
I would definitely like to read the full versions of several of the exerpted books, if I can find them.

[Laura LeAnn]

Organized by topic, many short essays on the history of World War I, military maneuvers and tactics, battles, experiences of soldiers, effects of the war, etc. A great introduction to a variety of topics about World War I.