Is it better as an introduction to WWI than “The Guns Of August”?

just started To The White Sea by James Dickey

that sounds like my kind of book.

assuming you have read thin red line and naked and the dead?

fiction: WW2 gunner goes down in Tokyo, works his way through the countryside

I’ll warn you, it’s around 800 pages. But I wasn’t able to put it down.

yeah, some history writers have a knack for the narrative, others write like they are lecturing and you do fall asleep halfway through a paragraph.

I’ll warn you, it’s around 800 pages. But I wasn’t able to put it down. Reading about young Winston Churchill in it is great. And Britain’s First Sea Lord (equivalent to the U.S.’s Chief of Naval Operations) prior to WWI, Jacky Fisher, was a fascinating individual.

If you want to read a book about the socio-political-military events which built up to World War I, I highly suggest “Dreadnought” by Robert K. Massie.

interesting, i’ll have to keep that in mind. It normally takes me a long time to get through non fiction, it’s my bathroom reading or bed time reading.

/Agincourt ftw

The importance of the stirrup cannot be understated in talking about the development of mobile armies in military history. John Keegan covers this very well in his “A History of Warfare”.

next up: The Pacific War, by author can’t remember.

I believe it was Lae in New Guinea, but I’m not positive.

I’ve read both the First World War and The Second World War by John Keegan. Though he doesn’t have a PhD, he is an excellent writer. But he writes from a very British/Eurocentric point of view.

Even though he ran into controversey in his later years, Stephen Ambrose writes excellent American history and his books “D-Day” And “Citizen Soldiers” are fantastic. My copies of both are thoroughly dog eared and worn from re-reading.

If you want to read a book about the socio-political-military events which built up to World War I, I highly suggest “Dreadnought” by Robert K. Massie. He too is an excellent writer. His history is based more on accounts, personalities, etc. but is very fascinating. He puts a human face on the events which led to war.

Anyone wants to keep this thread going all day, fine with me.

second’d

oh and the pure killing machines invented where there wasn’t any countermeasures. the tank, the machine gun, artillery. christ almighty.

yup. it doesn’t get the ink that WWII does, but you begin to undertsand WWII much better once you dig into the first world war.

oh and the pure killing machines invented where there wasn’t any countermeasures. the tank, the machine gun, artillery. christ almighty.

Hell, the longbow. The stirrup.

/Agincourt ftw

I remember seeing that picture when I was really little, in a big book of Life Magazine photos that my parents owned. I still have it somewhere–the Margaret Bourke-White shots of America in the Depression are unbelievable.

i’m fascinated by 20th century warfare. reading “the first world war” by john keegan now. enlightening to see the tiny details how the war started and how tactical errors in war plans for both sides led to the trench warfare.

oh and the pure killing machines invented where there wasn’t any countermeasures. the tank, the machine gun, artillery. christ almighty.

Also, this. No Capa, but one of –if not the very first– widely disseminated photos of dead Americans from WWII.

that was a big first, showing the dead while the war was going on. That was Tarawa, wasn’t it?

i’m fascinated by 20th century warfare. reading “the first world war” by john keegan now. enlightening to see the tiny details how the war started and how tactical errors in war plans for both sides led to the trench warfare.

next up: The Pacific War, by author can’t remember.

for good war fiction, check out Matterhorn. read that last summer, incredible.

You are correct. I believe those are the very first pictures from WWII showing dead American soldiers which the OWI allowed to be published.