The Beauty and the Sorrow: An Intimate History of the First World War

In a brilliant feat of retrospective journalism, leading Swedish historian Englund allows 20 individuals during WWI to convey their experiences through diaries and letters: among them, an English nurse in the Russian army, a British infantryman awarded the Victoria Cross, a German seaman, and a Venezuelan cavalryman in the Ottoman army. Englund’s deft collation provides insights into more than the carnage; for example, a French infantryman at Verdun knows, despite lower figures in newspaper reports, that he went into battle with 100 men and only 30 returned. Lacking only a Turkish Muslim view, this book fleshes out the grim statistics of the Great War. Writing in the present tense as though immersed in the events, Englund describes typhus and malnutrition, the Ottoman slaughter of Armenians, French troops’ mutinies, erosion of European colonialism in Africa, and governments’ suppression of the extent of their armies’ losses. The eloquence of everyday participants—a German schoolgirl describes the war as “a ghost in grey rags, a skull with maggots crawling out of it”—will link the reader to the era when the origins of the ensuing century’s conflicts became apparent. 32 pages of photos. (Nov.)