mrackover's review against another edition
5.0
I started reading this book in 1915 it took a long time. It's a fascinating and painstaking and brutally honest recounting on what feels like a day to day basis of the first few months of the first world war. It's good.
Spoiler alert. Nobody really wins.
Spoiler alert. Nobody really wins.
alexisdpatt's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
4.0
“Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War” by Max Hastings ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
“Catastrophe 1914” is an all encompassing look at the first 6 months of World War I. Filled with 600 pages of minute details of the war on all fronts, Hastings has done impeccable research onto the subject.
My only critic (which is the critique of most monographs) is that it can get a bit dull, boring and dry, but that usually has to do with the academic and their writing style. Hastings isn’t a popular historian and therefore won’t write as one. But if you’re a history buff and more into military history, this is a book that needs to be on your shelf.
I read this as a companion to “The Summer Before the War” and this, in my not so humble opinion, was more thrilling than the former—which I says more about the novel than Hastings’s writing.
Now, I’m going to give it a few months—maybe even a year—before I crack open Hastings’s “Inferno.”
asherl's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
arsenic_and_old_lace's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
sad
tense
medium-paced
4.0
lucifer_the_cat's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
sad
tense
medium-paced
4.0
aloyokon's review against another edition
3.0
A decent overview of the lead up to and the first year of the Great War, but way too biased in favor of the Allies and against the Germans.
bhautikg's review against another edition
5.0
Having read Max Hasting's comprehensive book on WW2(Inferno: the World at War), I was looking for a contemporary work on The Great War, probably the defining moment of modern times.
Max Hasting does a great job of bringing a new perspective for this work, colouring in the most epic human war ever fought with the personal stories and accounts of everyday folks caught up in it.
One of the surprises for me was learning, and Hasting's argues this quiet well, of the large responsibility Germany bore for deliberately precipitating this war. And while we say Germany, it really comes down to two people: the Kaiser and his Chief of Staff, both weak and insecure men with something to prove, and the world's biggest army. Though, they were steeped in German militaristic culture which encouraged a view for precipitating the war, its also worth noting the impossibility of stopping it once it the armies were on march.
For none of the belligerent States were organized in such a way that it was possible. You cannot do things that you have made structurally impossible, is an important lesson to draw from this catastrophe.
My favourite parts are also the parts where these societies, and many of its people, experience the wonders and horrors of 20th century technology for the first time.
Absolutely worth the read or listen.
Max Hasting does a great job of bringing a new perspective for this work, colouring in the most epic human war ever fought with the personal stories and accounts of everyday folks caught up in it.
One of the surprises for me was learning, and Hasting's argues this quiet well, of the large responsibility Germany bore for deliberately precipitating this war. And while we say Germany, it really comes down to two people: the Kaiser and his Chief of Staff, both weak and insecure men with something to prove, and the world's biggest army. Though, they were steeped in German militaristic culture which encouraged a view for precipitating the war, its also worth noting the impossibility of stopping it once it the armies were on march.
For none of the belligerent States were organized in such a way that it was possible. You cannot do things that you have made structurally impossible, is an important lesson to draw from this catastrophe.
My favourite parts are also the parts where these societies, and many of its people, experience the wonders and horrors of 20th century technology for the first time.
Absolutely worth the read or listen.
kayoreads's review against another edition
4.0
The big takeaways from Catastrophe 1914: war is the worst thing ever, and WWI in particular started for really no reason! The book's beginning was the most interesting to me because it catalogs the nonsense that led to the first world war, which was essentially Austria and Germany wanting war and finding an excuse to begin one. The rest of the book is extremely depressing, as you learn just how many people and animals died because of their leaders' stupidity and how the soldiers (and civilians) suffered. The incompetence and ignorance of the European leaders on all sides of the war and the blunders they made in its earliest days would almost be comical, if tens of thousands of people weren't dying because of them.
Though the book takes a while to get through because of its thickness, I never felt that Hastings' writing was dull or difficult. Hastings' well-researched opinions and insights on the war alone make this book worth it, and I feel like I walked away with the greatest understanding of WWI that I've ever had. He nicely intersperses his writing with first-hand accounts of soldiers and civilians, which was invaluable in the insight it offered into public opinion at the time. However, sometimes the first-person accounts were carried a bit too far, and I found myself wondering how all the extra details contributed to the book overall. My only other problem with the book was that it focuses heavily on the Western front, merely glossing over the events on the Eastern front and in Serbia. While I understand that the Western front was the most important strategically and am not surprised at Hastings' bias as an Englishman, I was a bit disappointed that the Eastern battles were not covered as deeply.
Though the book takes a while to get through because of its thickness, I never felt that Hastings' writing was dull or difficult. Hastings' well-researched opinions and insights on the war alone make this book worth it, and I feel like I walked away with the greatest understanding of WWI that I've ever had. He nicely intersperses his writing with first-hand accounts of soldiers and civilians, which was invaluable in the insight it offered into public opinion at the time. However, sometimes the first-person accounts were carried a bit too far, and I found myself wondering how all the extra details contributed to the book overall. My only other problem with the book was that it focuses heavily on the Western front, merely glossing over the events on the Eastern front and in Serbia. While I understand that the Western front was the most important strategically and am not surprised at Hastings' bias as an Englishman, I was a bit disappointed that the Eastern battles were not covered as deeply.
rbkegley's review against another edition
3.0
I enjoyed it, but you have to like 550+ pages about the lead-up to World War I and the first months of the conflict. The best parts are the changes in outlook from the impossibly rosy attitudes in the first weeks to the realization, four months and hundreds of thousands of casualties later, that no one saw a quick way out of the war.