Reddit reviews A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918
We found 19 Reddit comments about A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Delacorte Press
Pretty much, yeah. His intent was basically to have minesweepers clear the straight, battleships bombard the coastal guns and enter into the harbor of Istanbul with enough firepower to force a surrender (it almost certainly would have).
The problem was that - after clearing the forts and the Ottoman guns almost entirely running out of ammo, supplies, and communications - a single Ottoman mine layer got through some pretty lax night time patrols. It layed some mines and scampered off; those mines sunk a couple of battleships and damaged others.
These ships were specifically chosen because they were old and expendable. Iirc Churchill thought along the lines that if every single ship under the admiral's command had been lost but Constantinople were captured it would have been a great victory.
Unfortunately, due to having been at peace for so long, the naval commanders were terrified of losing ships. In peacetime it meant demotion and disgrace, but in war it was neccessary, and that's something that didn't translate well after literally lifetimes of no naval warfare. As soon as the battleships retreated due to relatively light losses at a point in the battle in which the Turks later admitted they literally could not have stopped another push, the naval campaign ended. To add to this debacle out of Churchill's hands, the naval commander had a nervous breakdown when Churchill pressed him to continue attacking.
Once the sea battle ended another began: there was an internal fight over where a prepared expeditionary force in the Mediterranean (which included the only pre-war combat troops not decimated by the Western Front) would be used to try and force Gallipoli by land or attack another, French-supported location.
Gallipoli won out, there were weeks and weeks of delays, a German military attaché completely reworked the Dardanelles' defenses, Churchill got less troops than he asked for, the commander was a bit of a dolt, the landings were completely botched in both location and execution, and so Gallipoli became as much a trench-filled disaster as everywhere else. Some months later, the Allies pulled out.
If you like the era, check out G. J. Meyer's A World Undone. It's a fantastic and total account of World War I and Gallipoli gets at least a chapter devoted to it. It reads like an actual book rather than a dusty old historian's textbook and is truly fantastic, and I cannot recommend it enough.
Fantastic recommendation, I got to read Junger's memoir last year and thoroughly enjoyed it. Absolutely horrifying and enlightening.
One of my favorite WWI books is A World Undone, by G. J. Meyer. Which is ironic since I don't think I've ever posted a single anecdote from it (an error I need to severely correct).
It's super dense, but probably one of the best overviews of the war, encapsulating a deep amount of academic research, primary sources from soldiers, civilians, leaders- all the while providing important historical context and background for the many many actors/nations involved, their motives, and goals.
I recommend this book to ANYONE interested in WWI besides a passing understanding. At 816 pages it can be daunting to most readers, but if you have the interest, absolutely check out this book.
Another great book is Max Hastings's Inferno, which is one of the best "social histories" of the war IMO. The wide-range of intimate, tragic, surprising, and sometimes funny testimonies collected in the book, along with Hastings's excellent prose, is one of the most "human" retellings of WWII, I've ever read and is a must for anyone who is interested in the war beyond just the military and political aspects.
Edit: I also want to include Hastings's Retribution which covers the Pacific campaign (1944-45) in equally masterful prose and heartwrenching testimony. Learned not only a lot about the Japanese perspective but also of people's lives under Japanese occupation.
Also Rick Atkinson's Liberation Trilogy, which is a fantastic (American POV) of the war and incredibly well written.
Storia antica:
Scienza: Qualunque libro di Paul Davies, Simon Singh, John Gribbin, Richard Dawkins, Jared Diamond, Steven Pinker.
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Ti consiglierei anche questo e questo ma non credo ne esista una versione in italiano.
Hey folks. I used to be a big war history book buff back when I was a kid, but got out of it in later years. However playing some BF1 and realizing that my WWI knowledge was pretty spotty got me looking for a book to brush up. I recently finished this guy and wanted to say that I really recommend it.
https://www.amazon.com/World-Undone-Story-Great-1914/dp/0553382403/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1503508652&sr=8-5&keywords=WWI+history
Trying to do a comprehensive war overview book is always fraught with peril. There is so much to cover and you need to do justice to all the major events while not turning into just a continual series of dates and casualty numbers. This book does a great job of balancing covering the action on the battlefields along with the homefronts and other political topics. I also liked how it helped to connect you to some of the major characters and empires by giving small side-chapters to fill in the background on them (The Romanovs, Ludendorff, The Ottoman Empire). Way less dry than John Keegan's "The First World War." Probably the best full war history book that I've read, it's pretty amazing how much it crams in without being too much of a doorstop.
BOOKS:
Dan Carlin is so fun to listen to. If you enjoyed Blueprint for Armageddon make sure to pick up "Wrath of the Khans," about the rise and zenith of the Mongol Empire. You can listen to it 4 times through and still hear new things on every listen... trust me haha.
Also, if you're interested in WW1 literature, this is required reading: https://www.amazon.com/World-Undone-Story-Great-1914/dp/0553382403
What is a good book to "understand" World War II? It could be from a political, technological, military or social perspective. As an example, I found G J Meyer's "A World Undone" to be a fascinating read on the political and military aspects of WWI.
Got hooked into A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918 and about a hundred pages in it. Has anyone else read it? what do you think?
I finally have time to upload a bunch of pictures from Paris's Musee d'armee.
For some reason, the camera took terrible pictures indoors. Suffice to say, I got a new camera after this trip.
I studied history in college and found this book to be the best resource on WW1.. A World Undone by GJ Meyer. Easy to read and isn't dull like some history books can be.
America's war for the greater middle east and A world Undone: The Story of the Great war, 1914 to 1918 will improve your general knowledge of the world.
A World Undone ( http://www.amazon.com/World-Undone-Story-Great-1914/dp/0553382403/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1325016559&sr=8-1 ) is a phenomenal one-volume account of WWI. Just enough details to be really interesting, but not so high-level as to be dry. It's well written and very readable. Plus, it includes small, side chapters that help explain the history and historical context of events of the main chapters. It's really a phenomenal read.
A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914-1918 by G.J. Meyer is a really thorough and enjoyable read that definitely covers 'the big picture' in an accessible way.
A World Undone by G.J. Meyer; I'm not a big history reader but I could not put this book down
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0553382403/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
read " A world undone" http://www.amazon.com/World-Undone-Story-Great-1914/dp/0553382403
Along with "The Guns of August" and Keegan's "The First World War," I'd recommend "A World Undone," by G. J. Meyer. It's quite a bit of book, but a great overview.
For a more comprehensive look at Europe in the 20th century, touching on WW1, WW2, and The Cold War I suggest Out of Ashes by Konrad H. Jarausch. You can find reviews online and everyone is jizzing their pants over it, but I'm halfway through and I really like it. He's a great writer. For WW1 specifically, I'd suggest [A World Undone by G.J. Meyer] (http://www.amazon.com/World-Undone-Story-Great-1914/dp/0553382403/ref=sr_1_10?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1449775167&sr=1-10&keywords=ww1). I didn't read it personally, but my bff is a huge military historian and she liked that it gave a larger global viewpoint than other more European-centric ones. I haven't read it yet (but she keeps bugging me to lol).
do yourself a favor and read "A World Undone"
this book is an amazing look at ww1 and the individuals that drove the war... I studied WW1 in college (history major) and this book stands out as one of my all time favorites.
I really enjoyed my reading of "A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918" https://www.amazon.com/dp/0553382403/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_Eh21AbS0PCY5A
Covers all aspects and "fronts" in a very interesting way. I highly recommend it. I was in the same place you were now and this was my first book in my journey (I've since read about a dozen books on the war, and I keep wanting more!) Hope you find your book of choice and enjoy the topic as much as I have!
I think by far, the most comprehensive and accessible one volume history on the war is "A World Undone" by GJ Meyer.
Brigadier Sir Richard Holmes' "The Western Front" is a very quick read and very enlightening on aspects of, well, the Western Front. It's focus allows for detail on the main theatre of the conflict, but that focus does take away form the "World' aspect of World War One.
A wonderful, visual account of the war and the aspects surrounding it is found in Stephen Patricia's "And the World Went Dark" which is both informative and a fantastic illustrated history. (Full disclosure, I contributed written copy to this book.)
And I can't resist a little plug for my own work, a novel set on the Western Front in 1917, which, while a work of fiction has a painstaking approach to realism and I've used points in the narrative to take an educational tone so that readers unfamiliar with certain points of the conflict can become immersed in the story. It's only available as an ebook at the moment, "Killing is a Sin"