The History Book Club discussion

This begins the ninth and final week's reading in our Spotlighted group discussion of The First World War by John Keegan

The complete table of contents is as follows:

List of Maps ix
List of Illustrations xi
Acknowledgments xv

ONE: A European Tragedy p.3
TWO: War Plans p.24
THREE: The Crisis of 1914 p.48
FOUR: The Battle of the Frontiers and the Marne p.71
FIVE: Victory and Defeat in the East p.138
SIX: Stalemate p.175
SEVEN: The War Beyond the Western Front p.204
EIGHT: The Year of Battles p. 257
NINE: The Breaking of Armies p. 309
TEN: America and Armageddon p. 372

Notes: p. 429
Bibliography p. 449
Index p. 457

The assignment for this week includes the following segments/pages:

Week Nine - April 19th - April 25th - > Chapter TEN p. 372 - 427
TEN - America and Armageddon


We look forward to your participation; but remember this is a non spoiler thread.

We will open up threads for each week's reading. Please make sure to post in the particular thread dedicated to those specific chapters and page numbers to avoid spoilers.

This book was kicked off on February 21st. This will be the tenth and final week's assignment for this book.

We look forward to your participation. Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other noted on line booksellers do have copies of the book and shipment can be expedited. The book can also be obtained easily at your local library.

A special welcome to those who will be newcomers to this discussion and thank you to those who have actively contributed on the previous Spotlighted book selection. We are glad to have you all.

This thread officially begins on Monday, April 19th. This wraps up the book and is the final week.


Welcome,

~Bentley

TO ALWAYS SEE ALL WEEKS' THREADS SELECT VIEW ALL

John Keegan

For those of you who are on the home stretch, please feel free to open this up early and comment on this last chapter. I will not be posting here until April 25th, however.

You may also comment on the book as a whole since this is the last chapter.

I think folks are still catching up and of course please keep posting as you do. I will keep the threads open and may post some additional comments as I see folks catch up. But I will always respond to any poster even if we have moved on to the next book which we will be doing on May 10th.

Look for these threads soon in the First World War folder.

Thanks to those who chose this book and took part in the discussions. I am so, so glad to have read it.

Just a small quibble, which shows my limited view of the world, but I thought Keegan gave the American troops short shrift. I have no way of judging how well they fought or how great their contribution, but I was surprised that he didn't bother to mention the total American casualties. (I know they would be negligible in comparison with those of most other countries who fought in the war.)

Keegan indeed focused his book primarily for a British audience. He obviously ignored the American involvement and I frankly felt that the last two chapters were rushed and wrapped up abruptly.

I do think it helped give me a perspective though that I had not had about a war I knew little about.

Thanks to you for joining in.

Hi Mary Ellen,
You do tend to find that many books covering WW1 written outside the US sometimes neglect to cover in full America's involvement. If you are interested in reading more about your countries efforts during the Great War I could suggest the book "The Last Days of Innocence" by Meirion & Susue Harries.

by Meirion Harries
Reviews:
"The Harrieses (Soldiers of the Sun) combine anecdote, narrative and analysis in this well-written account of the U.S. experience in the Great War. They effectively use French reports to illustrate the operational strengths and weaknesses of an American fighting force that was far more a product of improvisation than its WWII successor. The authors highlight race and gender issues as well, stressing the social and military consequences of anti-black hostility while affirming the war's positive effect on women's emancipation. The Harrieses insist that the war interrupted and distorted processes of domestic reform and national integration in the wake of massive immigration. Power became centralized; the country surrendered to repression and conformity; emotions evoked against the "Hun" were turned inward, against minorities, immigrants and dissenters. This argument lacks nuance, however. The rhetoric of propagandists is conflated with actual behavior, and particular excesses are presented as normative behavior. The Harrieses also seem to contradict themselves by depicting these processes as consequences of the war, after having taken pains to demonstrate that the U.S. was anything but an "innocent" society before 1917. Indeed, the book makes a strong, albeit unintentional, case that homogenization as an alternative to multiculturalism was accelerated rather than generated by American involvement in WWI." - Publishers Weekly

"In The Last Days of Innocence Meirion and Susie Harries describe World War I as the portal through which the United States stepped into the 20th century. As a relatively naive and still young nation, the United States entered the European war to defend ideals of democracy and self-determination. It emerged from the conflict not as a clear victor but as a nation transformed: militarized, nationalistic, rife with a hatred of "foreigners," and saddled by class and racial divisions. The Harries illustrate how mobilization for "total war" altered America, placing great emphasis on the growth of the federal government's role in American society and the often maligned sacrifices made by Americans. Five million men were conscripted and $33 billion dollars spent for a war that did little to promote American ideals or interests. The authors examined archival material from American, British, and French sources, and this lends complexity and originality to their work. The Last Days of Innocence is a challenging, at times controversial, revisionist account of America's involvement in the Great War and its lasting effects on American government and society." - Amazon.com

I found the book a great read and thought it was well researched and well written.

Thanks, Aussie Rick! I will have to add that to the TBR pile. My interest in US efforts is driven in part by the fact that my grandfather and great-uncle were veterans of the war. When I was a child, my grandmother kept the shovel issued to her brother with other gardening implements in her garage. The lung damage he sustained (from gassing) derailed some of his life plans -- he was told he would not live long, though he was 80 when he died! -- but at least he got a shovel out of the deal...

Hi Mary Ellen, that's a great story about your grandfather, they were a very tough generation and I'm glad he survived the war and many years after. I think its great that you are following up on their history and what they did for their country, not many people really appreciate the sacrifice made by these men.

I'm a first generation American and my parents come from the Ukraine and Russia. My great-grandfather fought in WWI for Russia, and frankly, I am shocked that he survived. He lost an arm, which I remember freaked me out a bit as a kid, but he lived. However, 10 out of his 12 children died, many of whom they never found their bodies. One of the two surviving sons was my grandfather, of course, the other we learned many years later ended up being a great war hero of WWI who died many years later without ever reuniting with his family.

Overall, I thought that this was a pretty good book. I wish there was more about the US, but it might added another 100 pages, which would have made it too long for me. I liked Keegan's work and will likely read him again, but not in the near future, because that text was dense :)

Hi Sera, Thanks for sharing that information about your great-grandfather, that generation come from hard times eh! Glad to hear you enjoyed Keegan's book, he has produced some great history books in the past that you may want to follow up on, like "The Face of Battle" and "The Mask of Command" which I can highly recommend.

and by John Keegan

Sera...my sentiments exactly.

Thanks for hanging in there.

I am currently reading by Robert K. Massie. I point it out here, because there is some great information in regard WWI. Interestingly, I'm more critical of Keegan's discussion of how the war began by reading Massie's perspective. I'm wondering if that's because Keegan's focus was primarily on the military aspects of the war, which failed to give the well-rounded picture that Massie has done in his book.

Since I am haven't read much military history, what do you all think? Also, what are your thoughts on the approach to how military history is generally written? Is it so focused on weaponry, etc. as Keegan was in his book? Or, is that just Keegan being Keegan?

Hi Sera,

John Keegan is a noted military historian who has lectured and published on a number of campaigns, battles and other miltary aspects of armed conflict:

John Keegan (good overview of his bio).

His main focus has always been on military history and I suppose with so many books out there covering so many different aspects of WW1 that I think he felt he didn't need to go into too much detail about the events leading up to the war other than the basics to get his book started.

I have enjoyed a lot of his books and always found them quite interesting and rank him up there with Max Hastings and Peter Holmes as good military history authors.

Max Hastings

Richard Holmes

Thanks, Aussie Rick.

It just goes to show that one can't one's history from just one book. The timing of reading Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie couldn't be more appropriate for me. It's a nice companion piece to the Keegan book. Later this month, I'll be reading Anna Karenina by , which although fiction, should also provide an interesting backdrop to this period of history.

Hello Sera, remember our citation rules.

by Robert K. Massie

Anna Karenina and War and Peace are among my favorite reads:

by Leo Tolstoy

by Leo Tolstoy

Sorry, Bentley, and I know better, too :)

That is ok Sera. We have to remind everyone if it is not done.

Hi Sera,

Another excellent book from Robert Massie covering the Great War is "Dreadnought".

by Robert K. Massie
Publishers blurb:
With the biographer's rare genius for expressing the essence of extraordinary lives, Massie brings to life a crowd of glittering figures: the single-minded Admiral von Tirpitz; the young, ambitious Winston Churchill; the ruthless, sycophantic Chancellor Bernhard von Bulow; Britain's greatest twentieth-century Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey; and Jacky Fisher, the eccentric admiral who revolutionized the British Navy and brought forth for the first true battleship, H.M.S. Dreadnought. Their story, and the story of the era, filled with misunderstanding, missed opportunities, and events leading to unintended conclusions, unfolds like a Greek tragedy in this powerful narrative. Intimately human and dramatic, "Dreadnought" is history at its most riveting.