The Guns of August

I'm not sure if there's anything I can say about Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August that hasn't been said already. It's nothing if not tight, though -- yes, it's not a short work, and the subject matter isn't easily and quickly distilled, but Tuchman retains her focus throughout.

Tuchman starts with the funeral of King Edward VII in 1910:

"the greatest assemblage of royalty and rank ever gathered in one place and, of its kind, the last."

and moves with deftness through the pre-war conditions, of the Germans, the French, the Russians, and the British, as well as the psychology that drove those plans -- of Kaiser Wilhelm, of the French generals, of the Czar and the general staff, and the British government.

 How many children witness something that impresses them enough in early childhood to write a book featuring the incident? How many of those stories would be noteworthy? As a child, Tuchman (along with her family) witnessed the German battlecruiser SMS Goeben's mad dash across the Mediterranean to Constantinople, fleeing British pursuit, who had realized too late that she wasn't making a break for the Atlantic. In a paper move, she was purchased by the Ottoman government, and spent the rest of the war in their service. Tuchman (as she notes in the introduction) was fascinated by this, and incorporates it into her narrative. Is it wholly necessary? Not entirely, but it helps set the stage of the naval war. I would have preferred the Battle of the Falkland Islands have been incorporated, but that was in December, rather than August (although Tuchman sometimes reaches into early September and October)

I'm not sure that I know enough about the First World War to say that this is a comprehensive account of August 1914, but there's a wealth of information here, about both what actually happened, and the motivations of those actors, drawn from letters and memoirs.

I was honestly hoping this would be more about the July Crisis, but Tuchman's extensive account of the first month is so masterful, I was very disappointed when it ended on the eve of the First Battle of the Marne. Recommended highly.

A Farewell to Arms

Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms is one of those books I probably should have read in high school, but somehow didn't. I finally rectified this recently, and I'm relatively glad I did.

Like all of Hemingway's work, the prose is unadorned and straightforward, lacking florid description, and occasionally leaving off where another writer would feel the need to elaborate. This can lead to a feeling of lack of depth.

The story is concerned with a young American Lieutenant (Tenente) driving an ambulance on the Italian front during the First World War, his relationship with his military contemporaries, and his experiences being wounded and falling in love with a British nurse.

The depiction of Tenente's paramour, Catherine Barkley, is either Hemingway's image of an ideal woman (wise, but unable to contain her passion), or a male dream (continually asserting what a 'good girl' she is, existing only to please her man). Or perhaps both. Her conversations with Henry are insipid, although that's the fault of both characters. Whether this is Hemingway's style, his lack of feel for women, or my poor ear for early twentieth century conversation remains to be seen.

The novel features judicious use of profanity, that has been excised (by the publisher) from my edition. I'm unsure how to feel about this -- the language is not quite archaic, but it would be jarring to see "shit", "fuck", and "cocksucker" (the three excised words) interspersed with clearly out-of-date dialogue.

Overall, an extended meditation on death in war, how deaths in battle become statistics, but that doesn't make the deaths of those we love any easier. A worthwhile novel, and one I'm glad I finally got around to reading.