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Title: A Storm in Flanders: The Ypres Salient, 1914-1918: Tragedy and Triumph on the Western Front by Winston Groom ISBN: 0-8021-3998-1 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: April, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.11 (27 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: A Decent Narrative With Little Depth
Comment: Winston Groom may well be a fine novelist (I have never read any other book by him), but as a historian he is lacking. His narrative style is fairly smooth and can be very gripping, but it occasionally stumbles over his often peculiar word choice and several grammatical errors. I often wondered where his editor was.
"A Storm In Flanders" offers no new perspectives on the war, a point made by another reader review here, but that shouldn't really be an automatic point against it. It is rare to see such a light treatment of so specific a topic. For readers seeking a light overview of the First World War, I most certainly recommend A.J.P. Taylor's "Illustrated History of the First World War" over this.
A true failing here is Groom's undisguised bias that makes an accolade on the back cover of the book about 'even-handedness' laughable. Groom never fails to lump togther every German at the Western Front under the title 'barbarian.' Groom also makes no effort to hide his disdain or admiration for some important figures of the time, and offers the reader little to justify his favoritism.
Groom is at his best when he is describing the conditions of the trenches and the experiences of the individuals, but there's very little of this that isn't just regurgitation from previously published memoirs and journals.
All in all, this book is at best an often entertaining light read, but not for someone seeking an in-depth analysis of the fighting at the Ypres Salient.
Rating: 5
Summary: An Ambrose for Word War I
Comment: I have a long-standing interest in history in general and military history in particular. After reading dozens if not hundreds of these books, I have found that the ones that stick with me are the ones that are beautifully written.
"A Storm in Flanders" is such a book, focusing on the British experience in the Ypres Salient during World War I. Groom wrote "Forrest Gump," as well as several history books. He knows how to put a sentence together and how to tell a gripping story. Once I picked this book up and started reading, I was hooked.
Much as Stephen Ambrose has done in his elegant books about World War II, Groom moves seamlessly between the generals in their chateaus and the grunts in their trenches. He makes use of diaries and poetry to tell the human story of a struggle that is all too often reduced to an abstract description of maneuver and battle. And he is very fair in his assessments--he acknowledges the criticisms of General Haig and many of the other leaders of the war, but he is always careful to balance these views with other considerations. The result is a well-told tale, fair and sympathetic to everyone involved.
The story of the Ypres Salient is not pretty. Groom does not pull his punches and does his best to give the reader, sitting in a comfortable armchair, some sense of just how horrible the Great War was. In a passage that I found especially memorable, Groom quotes Lieutenant Alfred J. Angel of the Royal Fusiliers during Third Ypres: "The stench was horrible, for the bodies were not corpses in the normal sense. With all the shell-fire and bombardments they'd been continually disturbed, and the whole place was a mess of filth and slime and bones and decomposing bits of flesh."
How anyone could live and fight in this hell on earth without going mad is simply beyond my comprehension, yet many British, French and German soldiers managed to do just that for four years running. Groom doesn't delve too deeply into the psychology of the soldiers, observing that "the search for 'why' and 'how' remains elusive and any effort to reason it out is to fashion a mirror of hell itself." He is probably right in saying that "[a] truly sobering thing would be a glimpse of what was actually going on in their minds during the fighting. That would not only be sobering; it would be perfectly frightening."
If you like a "A Storm in Flanders," I would recommend two other books. The first is "Face of Battle" by John Keegan, which tries to explain how soldiers keep fighting despite the horrors of war and the threat of instant death. The second is Sir Martin Gilbert's "The First World War," which describes the entire war using a relentless chronology that is truly compelling. Neither of these books is as well written as Groom's "A Storm in Flanders," but both are well worth the effort to read.
Rating: 5
Summary: Nonfict War Book for female history-lover's reading at pool
Comment: In response to one of the reviewer's comments that this book "dumbs down" the information, that is what I love about this book. I enjoy history, especially historical fiction, and this book is light enough for me to read at the pool. It's emphasis on how the war affected people makes it more interesting reading for us stereotypical females than many war books(I hated reading Red Badge of Courage in high school). As to the comment that the dumbing down was done to attract American readers, I think that's necessary. Most of us relate to the Revolution, Civil War and WW II, but see WW I as a footnote in history. One of my husband's scientific colleagues in Great Britain assures him that is not the case there! I had absolutely no interest in WW I, even though my grandfather fought in it, until our family went to Yper to see the Cat Parade in 2000. There our daughter(then 4) and I became much more interested in this particular part of WW I. This book is an enjoyable light summer read which will educate many of us about a topic of which we are woefully ignorant.
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Title: The Road to Verdun: World War I's Most Momentous Battle and the Folly of Nationalism by Ian Ousby ISBN: 0385721730 Publisher: Anchor Books/Doubleday Pub. Date: 10 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Passchendaele: The Untold Story, Second edition by Robin Prior, Trevor Wilson, Robin Pryor ISBN: 0300093071 Publisher: Yale Nota Bene Pub. Date: 01 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: To the Last Man: Spring 1918 by Lyn MacDonald ISBN: 0786707976 Publisher: Carroll & Graf Publishers Pub. Date: 30 January, 2001 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: The First World War by Michael Howard ISBN: 0192804456 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany, and the Winning of the Great War at Sea by Robert K. Massie ISBN: 0679456716 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 28 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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