I challenge you to put this book down before you reach the last page. I found it impossible; each page demands to be turned as Remarque takes you from one horrific battle to another, from one fear-filled experience to another.
I witnessed how the main character and all those around him slipped from the safe familiarity of humanity to the dark inhumanity demanded from each combatant as they endeavored to survive on the Western Front of the First World War.
This is not a new publication, but it is still universally relevant. It is one of the very few books that manages to convey the reality of war, which is ironic, as it is a work of fiction–sort of.
The story is told by a young 'unknown soldier' in the trenches of Flanders during the First World War. Through his eyes we see all the realities of war; under fire, on patrol, waiting in the trenches, at home on leave, and in hospitals and dressing stations. Although there are vividly described incidents which remain in mind, there is no sense of adventure here, only the feeling of youth betrayed and a deceptively simple indictment of war - of any war - told for a whole generation of victims.
I loved this book because of the way it was put together. Contemporary first-hand accounts are intertwined with supporting narratives. I cannot say I love this book for its content; it is about the Holocaust and human suffering, yet I love it because it convinced me that humanity endures even when the worst comes to pass.
If the people whose stories are told in this book could come through the war, albeit hurt and damaged, then those who suffer in war today can strive to do the same. This book showed me that wars don’t stop, but the good perseveres.
Based on select writings from an exceptional Amsterdam archive containing more than two thousand Dutch diaries from World War II, The War Diaries illuminates a part of history we haven't seen in quite this way before.
Nina Siegal, an accomplished journalist and novelist, weaves together excerpts from the daily journals of collaborators, resistors, and the persecuted-a Dutch Nazi police detective, a Jewish journalist imprisoned at Westerbork transit camp, a grocery store owner who saved dozens of lives-into a braided nonfictional narrative of the Nazi occupation and the Dutch Holocaust, as individuals experienced it day by day.
Who knew that a war could strike the human psyche so hard that those who survived did not have the words to describe it? The First World War was such an assault on innocence that new words were invented to write about it.
I love this book because it illustrates how language developed by looking at the writings of the soldiers in the trenches. War poetry is a special kind of writing, and that which came from the frozen mud fields in France between 1914 and 1918 is my favorite.
This is yet another book that convinced me that the human spirit is stronger than the destructive nature of war. I read it whenever I need inspiration.
Winner of both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award and named by the Modern Library one of the twentieth century's 100 Best Non-Fiction Books, Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory was universally acclaimed on publication in 1970. Today, Fussell's landmark study remains as original and gripping as ever: a literate, literary, and unapologetic account of the Great War, the war that changed a generation, ushered in the modern era, and revolutionized how we see the world.
This brilliant work illuminates the trauma and tragedy of modern warfare in fresh, revelatory ways. Exploring the…
This was my first book, and as the title suggests, the focus falls on South African prisoners of war, most of whom were captured at Tobruk in June 1942.
Based on interviews conducted with war veterans, it relates experiences of capture and captivity from the unique perspective of South African Union Defense Force soldiers who left a divided country to fight for the United Kingdom, their Imperial masters.
Today South Africa suffers from collective amnesia regarding the Second World War, but this book (among a few others) fills a historiographical gap in the war narrative of South Africa.
