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Most books that have been written recently about WW1 attempt to describe why or how it came about, or to describe the opening phase. As we go along over the next half-decade, I am sure that we will see more books and films about particular events as we reach the centenary of each, such as the Dardanelles campaign, Verdun, The Somme, 3rd Ypres, Jutland, the Russian Revolution(s), Versailles, and so on. I wonder how many books we will see about the human costs of WW1.
I just finished "Hell's Foundations: A Social History of the Town of Bury in the Aftermath of the Gallipoli Campaign" by Geoffrey Moorhouse
I've had this book on my to-be-read list for almost two decades. I finally read it.
This is not a book about how WW1 was fought or why it was fought, although there is enough detail here to leave you in no doubt about how it was for the combatants. It is the story of the effects of WW1, during and after the war, on the mill town of Bury, the regimental depot town of the Lancashire Fusiliers, and it describes the terrible human costs of what was a distant war on the soldiers and on those not actually fighting, the families and the community, both initially, as the war was fought, and the lingering aftershocks in the long years after the Armistice.
The quality of the writing is quite good, Moorhouse has a very readable style. I wish something of this quality was available in English, telling the French and German experience.
I recently read "The Missing of the Somme" by Geoff Dyer. An excellent book of literary quality about how WW1 was memorialized in Britain.
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