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A review by socraticgadfly
The Long Shadow: The Legacies of the Great War in the Twentieth Century by David Reynolds
5.0
This is a great book that looks at how "The Great War" not only eventually became "World War I," but got framed by "World War II."
The author does this eclectically, with a mix of chronological and country-by-country analysis. And, he looks beyond World War II to discuss that long shadow.
For instance, the 50th anniversary of Easter Sunday jump-started Ian Paisley in Northern Ireland, and the various reactions on the Catholic side there, as well as some splashover into Ireland.
War memorials? Different in Britain and France in some ways. Germany didn't commemorate the war dead for a lost war, and losing World War II only made that worse. Russia became the USSR, and the Bolsheviks didn't want to commemorate anything about a so-called imperialist war.
Certainly in the arts; Reynolds discusses the ongoing grip of Owen, Brooke, et al, on British, or more precisely, English poetry. None of the other countries saw anything like it.
On the other hand, modernistic art, while it did get a small bit more grip on post-war than pre-war UK, nonetheless, still never took off like it did on the Continent.
The US is touched on, too. But, since WWI did not see the US at anywhere near the center of fighting activity, and it withdrew from most international affairs afterward, Reynolds doesn't draw too much to it.
I would have liked to have seen a small bit more about Russia, and a fair chunk more about Japan. The book is still 5-star, but, if I could half-star, I'd slot it at 4.5.
The author does this eclectically, with a mix of chronological and country-by-country analysis. And, he looks beyond World War II to discuss that long shadow.
For instance, the 50th anniversary of Easter Sunday jump-started Ian Paisley in Northern Ireland, and the various reactions on the Catholic side there, as well as some splashover into Ireland.
War memorials? Different in Britain and France in some ways. Germany didn't commemorate the war dead for a lost war, and losing World War II only made that worse. Russia became the USSR, and the Bolsheviks didn't want to commemorate anything about a so-called imperialist war.
Certainly in the arts; Reynolds discusses the ongoing grip of Owen, Brooke, et al, on British, or more precisely, English poetry. None of the other countries saw anything like it.
On the other hand, modernistic art, while it did get a small bit more grip on post-war than pre-war UK, nonetheless, still never took off like it did on the Continent.
The US is touched on, too. But, since WWI did not see the US at anywhere near the center of fighting activity, and it withdrew from most international affairs afterward, Reynolds doesn't draw too much to it.
I would have liked to have seen a small bit more about Russia, and a fair chunk more about Japan. The book is still 5-star, but, if I could half-star, I'd slot it at 4.5.