Eyewitness to History

by John Carey

Imagine. . . Witnessing the destruction of Pompeii. . . Accompanying Julius Caesar on his invasion of Britain. . . Flying with the crew of The Great Artiste en route to dropping the atomic bomb on Nagasaki. . . Civilization's most momentous events come vibrantly alive in this magnificent collection of over three hundred eyewitness accounts spanning twenty-four turbulent centuries -- remarkable recollections of battles, atrocities, disasters, coronations, assassinations and discoveries that shaped the course of history, all related in vivid detail by observers on the scene.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Journalism, Historical, World History, Reference, War

752 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

Reviews

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Looking at the other editions, this book seems to have also been published under the title Eyewitness to History. It is, as the title(s) suggest(s), a collection of first-hand reports. Most are only a few pages long, and as they are all self-contained, the book is one that you can pick up and set down as you please. It’s not a bad book to have around if you have 10 minutes to spare - you can usually read a couple of the entries in that time. In total it’s a pretty hefty tome. I read the Kindle edition which at the time of writing isn’t listed on GR. Whilst the paperback version is described here as having 686 pages, my Kindle version ran to 1,062 pages, not including the list of sources and the index. The book was published in 1987, which unfortunately means it doesn’t contain reports from the momentous year of 1989. It opens with Thucydides’ description of a plague in Athens in 430BC and closes with an account of the fall of President Marcos of The Philippines in 1986.

Despite those opening and closing chapters, you can tell that this is a book published in Britain, with a British editor. The reports include a disproportionate number of incidents that either occur in Britain or at least involve British people in other countries. There will always be disagreement over the selection of material for a collection like this, but in my opinion there’s also an over-concentration on descriptions of wartime events. WW2 takes up an enormous section, but many other wars are included as well. Lastly, and possibly as a consequence of the emphasis on WW2, almost half the statements in the book are taken from the 20th century.

There were probably about a dozen or so of the accounts which I had read before.

There are so many accounts in here it is difficult to pick out individual examples. I was astonished to read a letter from Oliver Cromwell to his brother-in-law after the Battle of Marston Moor in 1644. He starts by speaking of how the Parliamentarians had won a glorious victory, thanks to be God etc. In the middle of the letter he suddenly, and with no preamble, says “Sir, God hath taken away your eldest son by a cannon-shot. It brake his leg. We were necessitated to have it cut off, whereof he died”. That was that!

There’s a great deal of tragedy described. I found one of the most affecting to be the death of an 8-year-old chimney sweep in 1813, burned and suffocated after being sent down a still-hot chimney, into which he got stuck.

A piece from Robert Graves, from 1915, described the incredible courage of a “tender-hearted lance-corporal named Baxter”, who walked out on his own into No-Man’s Land on the Western Front, waving a handkerchief, to go to a wounded soldier trapped close to the German lines. Initially the Germans fired at him but eventually they let him come on. Graves recommended Baxter for the Victoria Cross, but “the authorities thought it worth no more than a Distinguished Conduct Medal.”

Lighter events included a description of the “frost fairs” held on the frozen River Thames during the 17th century, and an account of near-farcical events during the funeral of King George II in 1760, an interesting contrast to the precision of the military manoeuvres during the recent funeral of Elizabeth II.

I can’t imagine the amount of research that would have been required to put this collection together.

[Krista · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is history these accounts offer, but history deprived of generalizations. The writers are strangers to omniscience. The varnish of interpretation has been removed so we can see people clearly, as they originally were – gazing incredulously at what was, for that moment, the newest thing that had ever happened to them.

Made up of nearly three hundred contemporaneous accounts, Eyewitness to History gives a truly fascinating insight into what people were thinking in the moment while experiencing those events from the past 2500 years that we still talk about today. Edited by Oxford professor and renowned literary critic John Carey, and initially released in 1987, my only complaint would be that these accounts are overwhelmingly written by white men – too often recounting battle scenes that failed to engage me – but I understand that this reflects the interests of the book's editor and the ethos of its time; I wouldn't want this book itself to be changed but I would be interested in reading other books of this type with more varied points-of-view. Thoroughly valuable romp through history, as recorded by the folks who were there to witness it.

These essays range in length from less than a page to ten pages, and feature everything from transcribed court proceedings to the reportage of well-known authors. I didn't know what to expect when I first picked this up, and while I didn't find anything particularly interesting about Julius Caesar's account of invading Britain, the ensuing piece about the burning of Rome in 64 AD was riveting (the perverse Nero may not have been fiddling, but it was rumoured that the Emperor took to the “stage, and comparing modern calamities with ancient, had sung of the destruction of Troy”). And although I intended to just dip in and out of this book, it became hard to put down when the pieces that immediately followed included an eyewitness account of the eruption of Vesuvius, a dinner with Attila the Hun, a Viking funeral (the poor girl sacrificed to accompany her dead master! The string of the master's friends who lay with her, saying they did this only for the love of their dead friend!), and then the Green Children of East Anglia. Every story short but fascinating; what matter one more, and then another? Read this as you will: seven hundred pages go by pretty quickly. Some of my favourite bits (which I am collecting here for myself; this is far too long for others to read):

Plato reporting on the death of Socrates in 399 BC: When he was implored by his friends to wait as long as possible before drinking the court-ordered hemlock, Socrates replied, “I think I should gain nothing by taking the poison a little later. I should only make myself ridiculous in my own eyes if I clung to life and spared it, when there is no more profit in it.”

I could not help but be particularly moved by women's stories, even if by necessity recorded by men, so we have the cruelty of the Great Mogul (Jahangir) towards a wife in 1618, as witnessed by Edward Terry: “For his cruelties, he put one of his women to a miserable death; one of his women he had formerly touched and kept company with, but now she was superannuated; for neither himself nor nobles (as they say) come near their wives or women after they exceed the age of thirty.” (The death itself involved this woman being buried in the sand up to her neck and left in the hot sun to die.)

There is a description of the various regional methods that Hindu women employed for suttee, written in 1650 by Jean-Baptiste Tavernier: “This miserable condition causes her to detest life, and prefer to ascend a funeral pile to be consumed with her deceased husband, rather than be regarded by all the world for the remainder of her days with opprobrium and infamy.”

There's a harrowing first-person account of a mastectomy performed without anesthetic, written by Fanny Burney in 1811: “When the dreadful steel was plunged into the breast – cutting through veins – arteries – flesh – nerves – I needed no injunctions not to restrain my cries. I began a scream that lasted unintermittently during the whole time of the incision – & I almost marvel that it rings not in my Ears still!”

A suffragette (the Lady Constance Lytton, disguised as a lower-class woman) is force-fed during a hunger strike in Walton Gaol in 1910: Laying in her own vomit afterwards, exhausted and “quite helpless”, Lytton writes, “Before long I heard the sounds of the forced feeding in the next cell to mine. It was almost more than I could bear, it was Elaine Howey, I was sure. When the ghastly process was all over and all quiet, I tapped on the wall and called out at the top of my voice, which wasn't much just then, 'No surrender,' and there came the answer past any doubt in Elaine's voice, 'No surrender.'"

Henry G. Wales reports on the execution by firing squad of Mata Hari in 1917: “She seemed to collapse. Slowly, inertly, she settled to her knees, her head up always, and without the slightest change of expression on her face. For the fraction of a second it seemed she tottered there, on her knees, gazing directly at those who had taken her life. Then she fell backwards, bending at the waist, with her legs doubled up beneath her. She lay prone, motionless, with her face turned towards the sky.”

A woman is stoned to death in Jeddah in 1958, as recorded by R. M. Macoll: After her male partner had been quickly and mercifully beheaded, the woman was given one hundred debilitating blows with a stick, and while lying sagged on her side, a crowd of men and boys began pelting her with stones. “It was difficult to determine how she was facing her last and awful ordeal, since she was veiled in Muslim fashion and her mouth was gagged to muffle her cries...It took just over an hour before the doctor in attendance, who halted the stoning periodically to feel the victim's pulse, announced her dead.”

And there were so many fascinating literary references, as with the open-air cremation of Percy Shelley, written by Edward John Trelawny in 1822: “The only portions that were not consumed were some fragments of bones, the jaw, and the skull, but what surprised us all, was that the heart remained entire. In snatching this relic from the fiery furnace, my hand was severely burnt; and had anyone seen me do the act I should have been put into quarantine.”

George Bernard Shaw, writing about his mother's funeral in 1914, begins with, “Why does a funeral always sharpen one's sense of humour and rouse one's spirits?” And after humourously describing his mother's cremation – making plain that she would have joined in on the laughter – GBS concludes with, “O grave, where is thy victory?”

George Orwell was shot during the Spanish Civil War in 1937 and the entire account is fascinating. “There seemed to be a loud bang and a blinding flash of light all round me, and I felt a tremendous shock – no pain, only a violent shock, such as you get from an electric terminal; with it a sense of utter weakness, a feeling of being stricken and shrivelled up to nothing. The sandbags in front of me receded into immense distance. I fancy you would feel much the same if you were struck by lightning. I knew immediately that I was hit, but because of the seeming bang and flash I thought it was a rifle nearby that had gone off accidentally and shot me. All this happened in the space of time much less than a second. The next moment my knees crumpled up and I was falling, my head hitting the ground with a violent bang which, to my relief, did not hurt. I had a numb, dazed feeling, a consciousness of being very badly hurt, but no pain in the ordinary sense.”

I was intrigued by Walt Whitman's description of the assassination of President Lincoln in 1865 and was thoroughly entertained by Mark Twain's breaking of a quarantine to visit the Acropolis in Athens in 1867. On the other hand, I wasn't much moved by Charles Dickens' account of a guillotining in Rome (1845) or Charlotte Bronte's visit to the Crystal Palace (1851). I don't know if the brief contributions by the likes of Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry Fielding, or Ernest Hemingway would have been included if they weren't well-known names. Further, I was a bit turned off by Gustave Flaubert's story of cavorting with Egyptian “dancing girls” in 1850 and totally disturbed by Paul Gauguin's story of how he (“nearly an old man”) came to “marry” a thirteen-year-old Tahitian girl in 1892.

There are many famines recounted (spoiler: famines always lead to cannibalism) and many accounts of cruel and inhumane behaviour (from the rapacious Spanish conquering the New World, to American slavery, bull-baiting, and factory conditions in Britain). There are enlightening eyewitness accounts of those people and places in history that we think we already understand: whirling Dervishes (1613); a survivor's story from a lethal night spent in the Black Hole of Calcutta (1756); Samuel Pepys describes the Fire of London in 1666 and Jack London describes the earthquake, and ensuing fires, that decimated San Francisco in 1906; H. M. Stanley recounts the entire day leading up to him famously inquiring, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” There are numerous executions (from the beheading of Mary Queen of Scots, the massacre of Tsar Nicholas II's family, to the Nazis sentenced to hanging after the Nuremberg Trials), scientific reports (Charles Darwin in the Galapagos, Captain Scott's South Pole Expedition, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon), and frequent slice of life essays (derbys and hunts, the Louis-Schmeling fight in 1938, a man loses a foot trying to hop a train to Winnipeg in 1899).

There was more about Trafalgar and Napoleon and the World Wars than suited my tastes, but there were often nuggets that piqued my interest even in the battle stories: Lord Nelson playfully putting a spyglass to his blind eye and reporting that he couldn't see his commander's semaphored orders to "close action" (and later, Nelson's drawn-out death – now one-armed, one-eyed, with a bullet in his spine – and his oft-repeated, “Thank God, I have done my duty”); the commander of a U-Boat in 1916 lamenting the imminent loss of the beautiful horses he could see on board the steamer he was about to torpedo; a sixteen-year-old apprentice pipe fitter witnessed the bombing of Pearl Harbor (and refused an officer's orders to go alone onto the burning Pennsylvania and attempt to put its fires out; the kid wasn't even in the army but later faced a military tribunal over this incident); flying in a plane accompanying the superfortress The Great Artiste on its way to bomb Nagasaki (“It is a thing of beauty to behold, this 'gadget'. Into its design went millions of man-hours of what is without doubt the most concentrated intellectual effort in history. Never before had so much brain power been focused on a single problem.”), written by William T. Lawrence, one of the architects of said “gadget”. I wasn't interested in much regarding the Korean or Vietnam Wars, but was interested in a Veterans' protest march on Washington D.C. in 1971 (“The truth is out! Mickey Mouse is dead! The good guys are really the bad guys in disguise!”) The final entry is on the fall of President Marcos of the Philippines in 1986, and by this point, it was obvious that I was reading the work of a professional reporter, and I have to admit that I liked the more amateur (unpolished) accounts better.

Overall: This was a fascinating journey through history and I enjoyed pretty much the whole thing.

[Kyle Whitmire · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is book is the closest thing you will ever own to a time machine.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a fascinating collection to dip in and out of in small doses. Reading too much of it in one sitting would have been a bit overwhelming and - certainly in the latter 20th century chapters - also somewhat depressing. Such is the perhaps unfortunate emphasis on military history and various violent episodes, particularly in the modern era, that it loses a star for my rating. There are many chapters here though also of a social history bent - including pieces from historic medical notes, notorious crimes, and also several great natural events such as Pliny the Younger on the eruption of Vesuvius, a 1724 solar eclipse, and Jack London on the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

There are many gripping and unique perspectives given throughout this book to much of human history. That said, there is precious little from African, Latin American, or Asian history (unless there is a colonial, pseudo-colonial or ex-colonial war going on...). But if it's battles, assassinations, plagues, historic firsts, executions, exploration and great acts of derring-do, advancements in technology, ritual practices, prisons, mutinies, revolutions, and sporting occasions you're after - then this is the book for you!

Many excerpts stood out, making the collection well worth it if you can find a used copy online or happen upon one in a used bookshop. There were also a fair few less memorable pieces. With just a handful shy of 300 contributions, totaling 686 pages that is inevitable. Some of my personal favourites were: Plato on the death of Socrates; 3 different eye-witness reports of the sinking of the Titanic; Dinner with Atilla the Hun in about the year 450; Oskar Kokoschka with Austrian cavalry on the Eastern Front in 1915; Noel Monks' report from Guernica - just before AND after the German bombing - incredibly moving; Cecil Brown's ship-borne report from the Japanese air & submarine attack (read sinking) of HMS Prince of Wales & HMS Repulse, in Singapore just a few days after Pearl Harbor - shocking in its rapidity; and Charlotte Bronte inside the Great Exhibition's Crystal Palace.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whether it is the death of Socrates or George Orwell being shot by a sniper in the Spanish Civil War (I didn’t know about that!), if you love history, you already know you should read original sources and not just rely on someone’s interpretation of events. This book, Eyewitness to History, is pack-jammed with accounts of famous events and not so well-known points in history. It is just plain fun, I enjoyed almost every account. The accounts are not long, ranging from a couple paragraphs to, at most, 10 pages. Most are 1-2 pages long, easily read in less than 5-10 minutes. I read one or two every day and did not race through the book. The blurb on the front, “Wondrous, a found treasure” pretty well sums this book up. I spoilered some because of the graphic content. Lots of military events but plenty of other accounts to keep most folks interested.

Here is an account of everyday life in the Middle Ages:

A Boy Thief, 1324

On Monday [in April, 1324] at the hour of vespers John, son of William de Burgh, a boy five years old, was in the house of Richard le Latthere and had taken a parcel of wool and placed it in his cap. Emma, the wife of Richard, chastising him, struck him with her right hand under his left ear so that he cried. On hearing this, Isabella, his mother, raised the hue and carried him thence. He lingered until the hour of curfew of the same day, when he died of the blow and not of any felony. Emma forthwith fled, but where she went or who received her the jurors knew not. Afterwards she surrendered herself to the prison at Newgate.

The Spanish prove they are the equal of any when it comes to visiting horror on the New World

Spanish Atrocities in the West Indies, c. 1513—20, Bartolome de Las Casas

Las Casas, who became a Dominican missionary, was the first European to expose the oppression of the native races of Latin America He had himself taken apart in the conquest of Cuba, 1513

The Spaniards with their Horses, their Speares and Lances, began to commit murders, and strange cruelties; they entred into Townes, Borowes, and Villages, sparing neither children nor old men, neither women with childe, neither them that lay in, but that they ripped their bellies, and cut them in peeces, as if they had beene opening of Lambes shut up in their fold. They laid wagers with such as with one thrust of a sword would paunch or bowell a man in the middest, or with one blow of a sword would most readily and most deliverly cut off his head, or that would best pierce his entrails at one stroake. They tooke the little soules by the heeles, ramping them from the mothers dugges, and crushed their heads against the clifts. Others they cast into the Rivers laughing and mocking, and when they tumbled into the water, they said, now shift for thy self such a ones corpes. They put others, together with their mothers and all that they met, to the edge of the sword. They made certain Gibbets long and low, in such sort, that the feete of the hanged on touched in a manner the ground, every one enough for thirteene, in honour and worship of our Saviour and his twelve Apostles (as they used to speake) and setting to fire, burned them all quicke that were fastened….the story goes on from here with more

The only way this will be purged from America is through a bloody war:

American Slavery: Punishment of a Female Slave, New Orleans, c. 1846, Samuel Gridley Howe

The author, Samuel Gridley Howe, was a leading America educator, and a pioneer in the education of blind and handicapped children.

I have passed ten days in New Orleans, not unprofitably, I trust, in examining the public institutions — the schools, asylums, hospital prisons, etc. With the exception of the first, there is little hope of amelioration. I know not how much merit there may be in the system; but I do know that, in the administration of the penal code, there are abominations which should bring down the fate of Sodom upon the city. If Howard or Mrs. Fry ever discovered so ill-administered a den of thieves as the New Orleans prison, they never described it. In the negroes’ apartment I saw much which made me blush that I was a white man, and which, for a moment, stirred up an evil spirit in my animal nature. Entering a large paved courtyard, around which ran galleries filled with slaves of all ages, sexes, and colours, I heard the snap of a whip, every stroke of which sounded like the sharp crack of a pistol. I turned my head, and beheld a sight which absolutely chilled me to the marrow of my bones, and gave me, for the first time in my life, the sensation of my hair stiffening at the roots. There lay a black girl flat upon her face, on a board, her two thumbs tied, and fastened to one end, her feet tied and drawn…the account goes on and is quite graphic

Some are not playing nice when they evacuate Gallipoli.

Gallipoli: The Allied Evacuation, 19 December 1915, Norman King-Wilson

The abandonment of the Gallipoli Campaign brought about the resignation of Churchill, the chief supporter of the venture.

On the morning of the 19th I got my final orders. By 8 p.m. only eleven men and myself of the FA [Field Ambulance] remained. The men in the trenches spent the last day turning every dugout into a death trap and the most innocent-looking things into infernal machines. Some dugouts would blow up when the doors were opened. A drafting table had several memorandum books lying on it each with electrical connections to an explosive charge sufficient to destroy a platoon A gramophone, wound up and with record on, ready to be started, was left in one dugout so contrived that the end of the tune meant the death of the listeners. Piles of bully beef tins, turned into diabolical engines of destruction, lay scattered about. In front of the trenches lay miles of trip mines. Hundreds of rifles lay on the top of the parapet, with string tied to trigger,…. .

Orwell is just so matter of fact describing being shot in the neck:

The Spanish Civil War: Wounded by a Fascist Sniper, near Huesca, 20 May 1937, George Orwell

I had been about ten days at the front when it happened. The whole experience of being hit by a bullet is very interesting and I think it is worth describing in detail.

It was at the corner of the parapet, at five o’clock in the morning. This was always a dangerous time, because we had the dawn at our backs, and if you stuck your head above the parapet it was clearly outlined against the sky. I was talking to the sentries preparatory to changing the guard. Suddenly, in the very middle of saying something, I felt — it is very hard to describe what I felt, though I remember it with the utmost vividness.

Roughly speaking it was the sensation of being at the centre of an explosion. There seemed to be a loud bang and a blinding flash of light all round me, and I felt a tremendous shock — no pain, only a violent shock, such as you get from an electric terminal; with it a sense of utter weakness, a feeling of being stricken and shrivelled up to nothing. The sandbags in front of me receded into immense distance. I fancy you would feel much the same if you were struck by lightning. I knew immediately that I was hit, but because of the seeming bang and flash I thought it was a rifle nearby that had gone….more follows.

Highly recommended for your daily dose of history.

[Tracey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I checked out this book after reading a review in A Common Reader's spring 2004 catalog.

The first-person accounts cover history from Greek and Roman times up to the middle 1980's - though coverage of any given timeframe may be uneven. It is relatively Euro/Anglo-centric, with only a few non-Western anecdotes. The mix of topics covered is also somewhat uneven - I found myself skimming many of the battle accounts - however, I imagine the source material for that type of event was more abundant than the "slice of life" accounts I found more interesting.

Some well-known names and writers are included: Pliny the Younger describes the eruption of Vesuvius, Samuel Pepys writes of the London Fire, Vespucci and de las Casas describe their impressions of the New World. Walt Whitman recalls the assassination of Lincoln, Jack London recounts his impressions of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake and H.H. Munro (pen name Saki) writes of the habits of the bird population on the Western Front in WWI. The majority of the articles are written by relative unknowns, whose only claim to fame is recording the events in which they were involved, even if only as sightseers.

Since I skimmed so much of the material, I'm not counting this rather lengthy book towards my page totals; it would probably be more enjoyable to dip in and out of at leisure instead of trying to read the whole book at once.

Recommended to those looking for an overview of history, both the large events and day to day occurrences.

[Fishface · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a huge book meant to be read one bite at a time. It's great because it takes you to all kinds of times and places in history, wherever there was someone writing things down at a big, or not so big, moment. The citations make it easy for you to find and read the larger books they came from. This is one of those great reads that will lead you to all kinds of other great reads.

[Simon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of fascinating material, although obviously it's patchy, and there are an awful lot of battle reports. Most disappointing is the 20th century section, which is overwhelmingly given over to wars: WW1, WW2, Korea, Vietnam. WW2 alone gets 100 pages.
But among all the combat and atrocities there are some touching, funny and eye-opening pieces.

[Bruce · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating collection of brief journalistic accounts of all different kinds of things from the Middle Ages to the late 20th century. Most of them are just one or two pages. The authors are either journalists or soldiers or statesmen or just private citizens. Many of them are about military battles, some about religious subject matter, some cultural events or famous political happenings, and some are just unique happenings somewhere in the world. Some are funny, many are heartbreaking, especially those in the 20th century about concentration camps.

I was surprised how many were by or about subjects of England, but that says something about the prominence of that country in world history.

Like salted peanuts, once you start reading a few, it's hard to stop.

[Hugh · Rating 5 out of 5]

A true five-star masterpiece that collects hundreds of eyewitness accounts of important historical events from the age of antiquity to the overthrow of Marcos. A perfect book for anyone interested in history and the humanities. Carl Sagan’s quote “Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors” is absolutely true in this case. There really should be many more volumes to this collection.

Personal note: I have been slowly reading and savoring this book since the mid-to-late 1990s, more than half my life. This one has taken me longer to read than any other book. I read a little, then put it away sometimes for a year or more, and then read a little more. Bittersweet to remove it from my night table.

[William Connelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

I began reading this as a result of the recommendation of, from all people, Jo Brand on BBC’s Between The Covers. I loved it. It is events as recorded by those who witnessed them. From the eruption of Pompeii to the bombing of Nagasaki. It covers major events to the mundane. The book can be dipped in and out of and whilst many of the accounts are harrowing, brutal, vivid and jaw dropping, it is certainly a fascinating and unforgettable read.

[Todd · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is just what the title says. Eyewitness accounts of various historical events. Mostly events of various levels of human depravity toward one another from wars, to massacres, to torture. The vignettes are at most five pages long. This made it a good book to dip into every once in a while rather than to try to read in long sittings. The subject matter also made this a sound strategy to use.

[Ana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book to dip in and out (although i read it through) and get a feel for witness accounts of fascinating events throughout recorded history.

Often we just get the victor's account of an event in our history books, so it was so refreshing to be able to read an everyday person's instead.

It's quite a hefty book and well, not literally everything interested me (descriptions of battles, no matter who's doing the describing, tend to bore me to tears, so i skipped those), but it was still an otherwise quite engrossing volume.

And although each piece was no more than a few pages, sometimes a little less than one, it was like reading a compendium of world history. I wanted to get on to the next account to find out what else people had witnessed.

All in all, i'd recommend it to any history buffs who enjoy the occasional 'light' history book, one that you can put down and come back to again and again and learn something new and fascinating from.

[Sandra Strange · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is just what it says: close to 700 pages of 1-3 page eyewitness accounts of moments in history, both important and revealingly everyday, stretching from Thucydides' firsthand account of plague in Athens in 430 B.C. to details of Philippine President Marcos' fall by a journalist present at the trauma in 1986. Warning, however: lots of real horror in eyewitness accounts of various battles, massacres, and terrorism, and Flaubert's hard R rated account of his sexual adventures will really challenge sensitive readers. These accounts give the reader authentic experience of these times in history. The hours this tome takes are time well spent.

[Midnight Blue · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best history book I think I've ever read--with eyewitness accounts from the people on both sides of the equation who lived through events that include the executions of Czar Nicholas and his entire family, the execution of Mata Hari, World Wars 1 and 2 and so much more--you get a 360 degree view of history. So often only the history as written by the victors is preserved and we lose the feelings and ideals and motivations of the losing side. I think kids in High School should be encouraged to read this book........

[Benito · Rating 3 out of 5]

some great stuff in here, going back as far as eyewitness reports of the blowing of Vesuvius and working it's way through to our time, along the way giving rare insights into great moments in history through the quills, archetypewriters and eyes of those who were there.

Ever wondered what it was like to have a few lagers with Attila the Hun? Well, the answer's inside...

On the downside I would have liked more reportage from the 20th Century - there's surprising little!

[Rhode PVD · Rating 2 out of 5]

Translations of primary source materials of various moments of interest through mainly Western European history. Many of these are well known and oft cited in other history books, so this is more of a 'greatest hits' collection than an unearthing of the new. Annoyingly the original spelling is kept for documents originally written in English, which makes it harder to read. Just because someone used an extra E the end of many common words does not mean I now want to see it.

[Patrick Wikstrom · Rating 2 out of 5]

edited by John Carey – started in 2018 put down for several other books- literally hundreds of short 1-3 page historical vignettes by various "first hand" authors- the death of Socrates, the burning of Rome, Sherman’s great march to the sea- much boring history but some gems thrown in - finally made it through- 1½ **

[Ann · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't really finish this book -- I read some parts and passed over quite a lot. Most of the accounts I read were fascinating, such as a woman's harrowing account of having a mastectomy in the early 1800s (without anesthesia!).

[Katharine Holden · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting, but relentlessly gory and ugly. I guess "momentous history" doesn't include any pleasant happenings. Nearly all excerpts are by male authors. At least one gratuitous sex memory is excerpted.

[Zechy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic book, can't recommend it highly enough. I read this right after a summery of European history, the combination of the historical view and the eyewitness accounts is something else.

[Clay Davis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great eyewitness to historical events.

[Eric S · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a collection of primary sources for more than 24 centuries of historical events. It is very good, but definitely uneven, and that's why it doesn't get a higher rating. I think anyone who is serious about studying history or more important BEING an historian needs to read this. Reading primary sources like this is good training—it allows one to see things through different perspectives and worldviews.

This observation by Amerigo Vespucci is an example. He assumes that war has causes that he is familiar with. The concept that maybe war is an innate part of human essence is alien to him.

"That which made me more astonished at their wars and cruelty was that I could not understand from them why they made war upon each other, considering that they held no private property or sovereignty of empire and kingdoms and did not know any such thing as lust for possession, that is, pillaging or a desire to rule, which appear to me to be the causes of war and of every disorderly act.”
-Amerigo Vespucci, 1502

If you want a description of hell, try J.Z. Holwell's "The Black Hole of Calcutta."

I love the irony of Chateaubriand's observation here. The United States would live with this contradiction for 73 more years.

"I gave my silk handkerchief to the little African girl: it was a slave who welcomed me to the soil of liberty."
-Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand, 1791, on fleeing the French Revolution and coming to the United States.

What is it with the British and some of their euphemisms for being dead? Anyone for "'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible!” And here’s one from the book.

“Sending him a step beyond the pension list."
-Capt. J. Kincaid, 1815, best euphemism for being killed.

Here is one for the way people deal with too much death. The way they just become desensitized to the horror and get on with living.

"We set to work to bury people. We pushed them into the sides of the trench but bits of them kept getting uncovered and sticking out, like people in a badly made bed. ... The bottom of the trench was springing like a mattress because of all the bodies underneath."
-Leonard Thompson, Farmhand at Gallipoli, June 1915

Overall, I'd recommend it if you want a feel for primary sources and the unpolished view of history it gives. That said, the last 3/7 of the book is about the 20th Century. I know there's more to select from that time period, but it starts to feel more like filler, so I can't rate it higher than a 3.

[Schuyler Wallace · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Eyewitness to History,” edited by Professor John Carey and first published in 1987, contains first-hand reports of events ranging from the death of Socrates to the first men on the moon. They are short accounts, written in the language of the time, by someone who was actually there when the events occurred. As a lifelong history enthusiast, my favorite reading is the account of an actual witness whose observations have not been colored by time or fanciful interpretations.

John Carey is a British literary critic and retired emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford. He has twice chaired the Man Booker Prize judging panel and is chief book reviewer for the London Sunday Times and appears in radio and TV programs such as Saturday Review and Newsnight Review.

In the introduction, Professor Carey informs us that the book is one of reportage, of written accounts by eyewitnesses. According to him this makes for authenticity by relying on information from people who can say, “I was there,” such as the bystanders, travellers, warriors, murderers, victims, and professional reporters he has included in his collection.

There are over three hundred eyewitness accounts in this book, ranging in time from 430 BC to 1986 AD. The topics cover such events as the death of Socrates, the eruption of Vesuvius, the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, Sherman’s march to the sea, the San Francisco earthquake, Pearl Harbor, the gas chambers at Auschwitz, and the horror of Nagasaki. Of lesser prominence but no less interest are detailed accounts of strange funerals, green children, human sacrifices, a circumcision in ancient Rome, an 1811 mastectomy in Paris with no anesthesia, the conquest of Mt. Everest, and a stoning in Jeddah.

Some readers have decried the abundant violence and inhumanity found in the book. Keeping in mind that the most memorable events are those that assault the senses, it’s hard for me to imagine a book filled with joyful moments as being a real look at history. I find this book a compelling and realistic look at where the world has been.

[Mahmoud · Rating 4 out of 5]

تجربه‌های ماندگار در گزارش‌نویسی ترجمه و تدوین علی اکبر قاضی‌زاده مجموعه‌ای است از گزارش‌های گزیده درباره مهم‌ترین اتفاقات تاریخ معاصر و به قلم بزرگان ادبیات و دیگر نخبگان سیاسی، هنری و علمی.
رضا فرخی در بخش کتابخوار تجربه‌های ماندگار در گزارش‌نویسی نوشته جان کری با ترجمه و تدوین علی‌اکبر قاضی‌زاده را برای خواندن معرفی می کند.( https://b2n.ir/w52181)
این کتاب شامل یک درآمد و یک مقدمه با عنوان «سخن نخست» و 70 متن گزارشی از گزارش‌های منتخب یکی دو قرن اخیر است. مدیر انتشارات دفتر مطالعات و توسعه رسانه ها در توضیح بیشتر کتاب یاد شده گفت: گزارش نخست خلاصه‌ای از اثر جاودانه ابوالفضل بیهقی، یعنی «بر دار کردن حسنک وزیر» و گزارش دوم، در مورد قتل ناصرالدین شاه با عنوان «ترور صاحب قران» است.
سایر گزارش‌ها بجز چند گزارش که در ابتدای کتاب آمده ترجمه روان و شیوای قاضی‌زاده از کتاب جان کری است.
قاضی زاده در مقدمه می‌نویسد: «از کتاب جان کری تنها بخشی را ترجمه کرده‌ام که به رویدادهای بسیار معروف ربط می‌یابد یا از نویسندگان شناخته‌تری هستند.»
در بخش «درآمد» نیز نوشته است: این مجموعه را نمونه‌ای از کوشش‌های حرفه‌ای در کار گزارشگری می‌داند که در انواع زمینه‌ها و موضوع‌ها، به سبک‌های مختلف و مناسبت‌ها و در محل‌های گوناگون تهیه شده است و زبان گزارش در این میان رساترین و مؤثرترین مهارت ارتباطی است. کیهان افزود: این مجموعه درواقع مروری است بر مهم‌ترین حوادث دنیا در یکی دو قرن اخیر و با همه خشونت و تلخی که در بسیاری از گزارش‌های این کتاب می‌توان سراغ کرد، خط مشترک و پیوند اصلی در مجموع کارها، نکوهش نهاد ستمگری انسان و ارج گذاشتن بر کوشش‌های انسان‌مدارانه است؛ معادله‌ای که به اندازه زندگی بشر پیشینه دارد. کوتاهی قطعه‌ها و تنوع موضوع‌ها مهم‌ترین ویژگی این کتاب است.
علاوه بر این، زیرنویس‌ها و توضیحات بجای قاضی‌زاده در جای‌جای کتاب به خواننده در درک هرچه بیشتر شرایط گزارش کمک بسزایی می‌کند. امید است این مجموعه‌ی بسیار زیبا، روان و خواندنی که به همت علی‌اکبر قاضی‌زاده ترجمه و تدوین یافته در زمینه شناخت انواع سبک‌ها و روش‌های گزارش‌نویسی برای اهل فن، دانشجویان و آنان که دوست دارند بیاموزند، مؤثر باشد. (https://b2n.ir/t71841)

[Sean · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this book. The variety of events covered in these accounts, and the "real" feeling that they had to them kept me engaged throughout the entire book. The majority of events did cover major battles, military engagements, and lives of soldiers, but even among those, the vast differences in wars across generations and countries was fascinating to read.

The format of the book, entirely first-hand accounts with sometimes a bit of contextual information, is something I haven't read before, and it was very refreshing. There is something much more tangible and alive about a first-hand account of an event, rather than the somewhat dry accounts found in most history books. The span of the events, from something like 400 BC to 1986 AD, allows one to reflect on human history as a whole, rather than focusing on a specific period of time.

If I had to make one change to this book, it would be to provide more contextual information on some of the lesser-known events. I am by no means a history buff, so it would have been great if each new account, or even each new period of time could have had a short summary of the major players, other "background" events happening, etc. Something like that would have helped me to place each account in the timeline of history, although I can definitely do my own due diligence and use this book as a jumping off point to research these events further.

Again, I loved this book, and fully recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in history.

[Antony · Rating 5 out of 5]

Started off dipping into this book and just reading the accounts that appealed to me. Liked it so much I then went back and read it right through. Often extremely harrowing, the eyewitness accounts have an urgency which history books usually lack. Dominated by war, especially the 20th century, but also interspersed with insights into civilian life. They triggered my interest in researching further into several of the events described. These are a few of my many favourites:

A Viking Funeral, AD 922 - as described by an envoy from the caliph of Baghdad.

The Black Hole of Calcutta, 1756 - as described by one of the few survivors.

The Death of Lord Nelson, 1805 - "Kiss me, Hardy." etc.

The Charge of the Light Brigade, 1854 - "an excess of valour".

Tsar Nicholas II and the Russian Imperial family shot 1918 - not sure why they had to shoot the doctor, the maid and 2 waiters also?

German Airborne Invasion of Crete, 1941 - from the perspective of one of the German paratroopers.

[Jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a somewhat random collection of eyewitness accounts of famous events in history. Slight emphasis was placed on accounts of wars and other important events in English history. Most are interesting to read, but there are a few accounts of the Holocaust that were worth the price of admission. I've read a number of Holocaust accounts, but there were a couple in this book that really affected me that I've never read, I think one came from a contemporaneous trial - a German prison guard's account of mass murder of Jews, including young children. We also got a newspaperman's account of the hanging of the top German brass responsible for WWII. There are some really interesting stories that you probably haven't read elsewhere, and that makes this definitely worth picking up.

[Ben Mckown · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is perhaps the most fascinating history I’ve found. It is publish by Harvard University Press. In round figures Cary picked 250 extraordinary historical events; each event is described in eye witness format....as one might expect having a conversation with one who witnessed it moments before.
Join Julius Ceasar as he conquers Britain 55Bce; Thomas Becket’s murder1170 AD; commonNapoleon trench marksman at Waterloo; Heavy weight world champion Joe Louis’ blow by blow initiation of Max Schelling (to A. Hitler’s discuss); Neil & Edwards’ moon landing etc.

BFMckown 2020 New Orleans 01/13/2020

[Morten · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sikke en ordentlig stak fortællinger fra vidt forskellige tider men alle sammen om mennesker. Hvem vi er, hvad vi lægger mærke til, hvordan vi opfører os under pres, i krig, og i kærlighed. Fantastisk genvej til mere horisontal historie (hvad skete der samtidigt rundt om i hver i givne perioder) og sætte noget kronologi på nogle af de begivenheder vi kender til, samt gøre fortiden 'genkendelig' og relevant. Fed samling. Spændende læsning. Mærkeligt at der ikke var en eneste historie fra USAs store borgerrettighedsbevægelse i 1960erne.