From the back cover:

"In 1972 a team of academics and archivists from the Imperial War Museum set about the momentous task of tracing ordinary men and women who had lived through one of the most harrowing periods of modern history, the First World War.

Veterans from Britain, Germany, America, Australia and Canada were interviewed in detail about their day-to-day experiences on and off the front.

The archive has grown to be one of the most important of its kind in the world and provides a unique account of life during the Great War.

These tapes, some of which have rested unheard for decades, contain the forgotten voices of a generation no longer with us.

Now over thirty years on, after hundreds of hours in the archive, author Max Arthur has created this remarkable, landmark history of the First World War."

Picked up cheaply, especially for BookCrossing purposes.

I'm planning to release it at tomorrow evening's 'Moustache'-themed BC Meetup - being held at The Brigantes in York from 7pm onwards... (There being a couple of fine examples on the front cover!)

releasing, as promised...

Well, since no-one wanted it at the meet, I took it home myself... (with a view to reading it, of course) !

Well, what a fantastic (though horrifying) book! These accounts provide nuance and detail to experiences which are now in danger of becoming historical cliche. In that sense, they humanise events that took place over 100 years ago in a very immediate and visceral way. The editing succeeds in recreating the slow creeping horror of the war for the soldiers involved, the almost imperceptible erosion of normality that saw blase new recruits transform into despairing, disillusioned, damaged veterans who had seen (and survived) more trauma than seems imaginable. Their dignity and understatedness in recounting grim, disturbing events in often matter-of-fact ways is quite remarkable and, in a way, quite heartbreaking. I wish there'd been a few more civilian voices and a few more German voices - but that doesn't ultimately take enough away for me to give this book anything less than a 10/10. It should be a mandatory element of all secondary school curriculums - as its honesty and plain-speaking are infinitely preferable to the distancing abstractions of most 'history' books.

Planning to release at this Tuesday evening's 'Authors-Beginning-With-M'-themed BC Meetup being held at The Brigantes in York from 7pm onwards... ('M' is for Max)

releasing, as promised...

Since this has been kicking around for a while now, in order to free up some space on the Brigantes OBCZ Bookshelf, I thought I'd move it on to the Ye Olde Starre Inne OBCZ Bookshelf - where hopefully it'll find a new reader...

releasing, as promised...