Coby Babcock’s Reviews > The Beauty and the Sorrow: An Intimate History of the First World War > Status Update

Right now, it is showing that all the people who rushed in to help through the first wave of people are starting to get burned out of being there. The initial fire sparked by this war is gone. Soldiers and civilians are both losing their pride in the war.

This book has a lots of themes. Themes that come through non-soldiers are a person's spirit lives on even if they die, love, and family matters. Themes given by the soldiers are honor, war first then love, and healthy over the sick or injured or prisoners. These are the themes that this book covers. They apply to everyone.

This book is really good on giving you the perspective of how people handled a
problem at the time of World War I. It is very different. If someone committed a crime, back then they could be shot without a trial. But today, everyone goes through a fair trial no matter the crime. It also presents the theme where at the time of total chaos, The world turns into every man for himself.

A memorable scene from this book is on page 38 where it says "More wounded men arrive but they are turned away at the door. There is no more room". This scene just tells you that in WWI, there wasn't enough supplies or places to get treated.

The book is interesting. It tells readers how it felt for people when soldiers left to go off to war, through personal stories.