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Originally Posted by LovesMacs
I'm splitting most of my reading between Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August, a history of the beginnings of World War I, and Franklin Foer's How Soccer Explains the World. I'm about halfway through these books.
The Tuchman book is interesting at times but other times I lose track of all the names. I'm continuing to read the book mostly because of the war's anniversary. Is the book the problem, or is it me? Perhaps I'm not in the right mood for this kind of writing.
As for the Foer book, I've learned things I never knew before about the links between ultra-violent soccer (football) fans and the brutalities during the breakup of what used to be called Yugoslavia. There's more to the book than that, but I've only read as far as the discussion of who owns Brazil's football (soccer) clubs.
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Barbara Tuchman turned me on to history when I read "The Proud Tower". I've read most of her books two or three times for the literary quality of her work (plus the excellent research and level of detail); she can make the past come alive. When I read "The Guns of August", I did find it a very difficult read, but for me it was primarily because she could make the actors alive enough that it was horrible to see the train wreck coming; to me it is like watching the film of JFK's murder - you want to stop it before it happens.
Apparently, the book had a significant impact on JFK; supposedly, during the Cuban missile crisis, he was mindful of how the Balkan crisis had escalated into WW1 and strove to resolve the situation peacefully. Just from that perspective, I believe it is worth reading.
It's a bit old now (about 55 years old), and there has been some more information available to historians that wasn't available then, but I think that it's still one of the best books about how WW1 came about.
Thanks for the recommendation of the Foer book. It sounds very interesting, and I'm putting it on my TBR. BTW, have you ever read "The Old Patagonian Express"? There's a bit in there about a soccer game in San Salvador.