Jeff Shaara
I loved this book. Callie recommended it to me a while ago, and one time when I was up at the house her sister Kimberly gave it to me and told me to read it. I finally had a chance to devote sufficient time to it over Spring Break, and it was my great accomplishment of the period.
The book is primarily fiction, but like Shaara's other novels (and his father's), they are rooted in fact. The main characters (there are four in this particular novel) were all real people who were involved in the conflict, and though it is a novel, the book does a good job of creating realistic situations, dialogue, and reactions in its narrative. I could not put it better than one of its blurbs: it is a novel that reads like history and history that reads like a novel. I think that is really what this book is all about. It's brilliant and finally, something historical I've encountered is well-written. I couldn't be happier.
The only places where I kind of got lost were certain sections about General Pershing. I think, though, that the fault is mine. I'm not one who deals with general strategy (though I assure you, I know the Von Schlieffen Plan damn well, thank you) very much, rather life in the trenches, but if someone is interested in this kind of thing I think the interaction between the three Entente generals can be really intriguing. Judging by the construction of the rest of the novel, I'll assume it's very well done.
Even the parts I found a little boring had their merits and the plot never stands still. The book manages to give a survey of the war experience through just a few eyes, using Pershing's story to complement the more narratively-inclined plotlines regarding the actual fighting of the war. The opening chapter is a stunning glimpse of life in the trenches for a new recruit and makes its point (the most popular point regarding this war...but I'll let you figure it out) very clearly by the time the last sentence hammers you over the head (and quite effectively at that; I've still got bruises).
The second part of the book concentrates mostly on the air war, seen through the eyes of Baron Manfred von Richthofen (yes, that baron) and Raol Lufbery, both aviators. I think this approach is very effective because trench warfare has been looked at a lot (I'm assuming most people who would read Shaara's book are well acquainted with All Quiet on the Western Front) in other books and there does not seem to be that much popular literature about the air war. Additionally, Shaara's focus on personalized, moving plots does not lend itself well to trench drudgery, where life expectancy was shockingly low and life consisted of the same pointless movements day after prolonged, agonizing day.
By the time we get to ground warfare, after the pilots' stories are fleshed out and Pershing's has shown how the Americans ended up in the quagmire, the trench lines are moving and the war has changed shape. We see the war now through the eyes of a young American soldier who witnesses his share of horror but is making actual quantifiable progress, ensuring that Shaara's battle-based view of warfare does not grow stale as it likely would in the trenches. Shaara sticks to what he's good at here and leaves the philosophy to writers like Remarque, though any novel about World War I is likely to make the basic argument regarding the effectiveness of the Great War. Shaara's book is good for gaining additional useful perspectives on a vague conflict often ignored in the shadow of World War II and Adolf Hitler.
Go read this book. It is most excellent.
Grade: A
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