World War I Books

A Couple of old WW I titles that are favorites of mine, and in some way influenced my thinking.

The Battle for Europe: 1918 by H. Essame.  Charles Scribners Son's, New York, 1972. 216pp, Index.

A nice short "popular" account of the time, I probably bought and read it in 1976 (It still has an Edward McKay price sticker inside, a bookstore in Fayetteville, North Carolina).  Covers the period from the Kaiser's Offensive to the end of the war, mostly from the British perspective.  The author himself and his viewpoint are much closer to how the participants probably viewed the events than anything you will find in current "Mainstream" literature about the period.

The Unknown Soldiers: Black American Troops in World War I.  by Arthur E. Barbeau and Florette Henri.  Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 1974.  279 pages, Index, Illus.

Another "Find";  I am not sure when I acquired this, probably as a mail order discount book (1981?), but it is not marked as a remainder. This book certainly influenced my thinking on the subject, I hesitate to call it an "Early" work, but it is not loaded with the scholarly analysis modern titles tend to be lumbered with.  Worth seeking out because when it was written, these events were within living memory, closer to the authors than WW II is to most people living now.  Certainly by this time ever National Guard and Army Reserve center had an "Army Heritage" poster featuring the (Black) 369th Infantry in action.

The Last of the Doughboys by Richard Rubin (Book Review)

The Last of the Doughboys: The Forgotten Generation and their forgotten World War.

by Richard Rubin, New York, Houghton-Mifflin, 2013, 518 pages, illustrated, maps, index.
 ISBN 978-0-547-55443-3

This has been on the "New Books" Display for a couple of months at Barnes & Noble, it revolves around the last ditch effort of the author to collect oral history from the last surviving American veterans of WW I. By the time the author started, most of the Gentlemen (and one lady) were pretty much on their last legs and living in "Assisted Living" of some sort.  But the book succeeds on many levels, it is much more than a collection of half remembered war stories

The author obviously did some thorough research on his subject once started. The book could serve as a decent "Drum and Trumpet" introduction to American military participation in the war.

There has been a flurry of books on the beginning of World War I, this is an excellent way to introduce students to how different the world was then, and the human dimensions of the conflict.  And includes some interesting discussion of veterans lives postwar. Complemented by what are (these days) pretty good maps, and introducing the issues of Race and Women quite well, if not really exploring the participants feelings on those subjects.

I am very happy my local Public Library added a copy to their collection.