on historical fiction (III)

The last time I had an historical fiction update was way back in October. I haven't done much fiction reading as of late, have been plowing through books on the French and Indian War. However, I've staked out some decent leisure time and have allowed myself to indulge reading without underlining or note-taking. I can actually get through a chapter a night instead of a chapter every week! I'm still running with the scheme from October, pairing historical fiction with historical nonfiction. I've been reading up on the Great War (a.k.a. World War One). It's a fascinating war for all sorts of reasons, and bloody, too. Although the death toll seems not-so-bad in comparison to the war that would come two decades later, it was still a damned bloody war with the death toll in the millions. World War One marks the beginning of submarine warfare and the use of aeroplanes in combat. 

The historical fiction I chose was Jeff Shaara's To the Last Man (the mystic monk Rasputin commented that if war were to break out in 1914, it'd be a war down "to the last man", which I'm positive Shaara's referencing). Shaara writes almost strictly from an American point-of-view, so the first half of the book follows the war through the exploits of the American fighter pilots in the Lafayette Escadrille. The second half of the book follows the exploits of the American soldiers on the western front; the war was almost over when the United States leapt onto the scene, and grudgingly-so; Wilson ran a presidential campaign based on the slogan "Too Proud to Fight" (whatever the hell that means) and with his achievement of keeping the United States out of war. Reelected, what does he go and do? Join the war. He's a lame duck, who can blame him?

The second book is Stokesbury's A Short History of World War One. Stokesbury's little book takes the wide sweep of the war and condenses it to a mere few hundred pages. He examines different aspects of the war in different chapters, zeroing in on things such as submarine warfare and the emergence of aerial combat, but overall he simply gives a chronology of the war through the biggest battles. It's a great starter, I'd say, for anyone interested in the war. The next few books I have on the lineup go into more detail, and I'm looking forward to reading them paired with fictional novels (and I may or may not read All Quiet on the Western Front, just because it's so damned cliche).