**Can Anyone Recommend...?

(An experimental thread for seeking recommendations. I find that members of this group are so broadly and deeply read, and I'm hoping to turn that into a resource for other group members. This experiment may fail.)

...A good social history of world war one - something that focuses more on the impact of the war on non-combatants, the homefronts, occupied areas, morals and mores, etc.

Well - this is one of the periods in which I have become especially interested over the last few years and have the following as real favourites which were both inspirational and caused me to read more widely!

A Diary without Dates by bagnoldbagnoldeniden::Enid Bagnold

The Deepening Stream by Dorothy Canfield
http://www.librarything.com/work/1090131 A five star read set in France - highly recommended as essential reading!

Women in the War Zone: Hospital Service in the First World War by powellann::Anne Powell. This is especially relevant if you are interested in the role of women during WW1.
Not So Quiet: Stepdaughters of War by Helen Smith. This was written in response to the next book -
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

Edited for touchstones - sorry. Click on link to the Canfield book as the touchstone took me to the wrong author.

Haha, Julie, did you know I was baiting you specifically with that question? :)

It appears that I am easily baited! Trouble is that I read one book and that leads me onto another whole new area of interest! So, my fiction and non fiction tend to 'feed' each other ... like the Dorothy Canfield book The Deepening Stream!

>4 juliette07:, "Trouble is that I read one book and that leads me onto another whole new area of interest!" That's me in a nutshell.... :)

I recommend Alexander Solzhenitsyn's novel August 1914, though it may be a little outside your brief.

I'd recommend The Great War and Modern Memory, by Paul Fussell, but I think you've read it already.

I haven't read this but I was very impressed by Jo Brand's programme for the BBC about Vera Brittain and her book Testament of Youth.

Quote from Wikipedia:

Testament of Youth has been acclaimed as a classic for its description of the impact of World War I on the lives of women and the civilian population of Great Britain. The book shows how the impact extended into the postwar years. It is also considered a classic in feminist literature for its depiction of a woman's pioneer struggle to forge an independent career in a society only grudgingly tolerant of educated women.

>6 timjones:, tim, August 1914 seems perfect.

>7 Nickelini:, Joyce, I haven't, but thanks for reminding me that it's on my TBR list!

>8 kirsty:, kirsty, I read about Vera Brittain in one of my best reads of 2010, Katie Roiphe's Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Portraits of Married Life in London Literary Circles 1910-1939. What a fascinating character she was and how sad.

Thanks all & keep 'em coming. I knew I could count on this group to come through!

Parade's End by Ford Madox Ford. An omnibus of four novels related to Ford's experience during WWI.

>1 fannyprice: MaggieO also has an obsession with war books, nonfiction and fiction (she's not in this group but you know where to find her)

Vera Brittain. Vera Brittain. Vera Brittain.

Voices from the Great War, by Peter Vansittart (excerpts from many sources, across Europe, including prose, poems, songs, letters)

Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age, Modris Eksteins

Speak for England, Melvyn Bragg (this one is a social history that covers most of the 20th century in Britain, including the period of World War I)

Testament of Youth, Vera Brittain (yet another vote for this one!)

I've been wanting to read Bagnold's A Diary Without Dates, but I haven't found a copy yet; I'll second juliette07's recommendation, though.

Lyn Macdonald has written a number of oral histories about World War I, though these mostly concern the experience of soldiers on the front. If you are interested in the experience of nurses serving in France, though, I'd highly recommend her The Roses of No Man's Land.

I can probably come up with some other titles. I'll look around some more.

In a few years it'll be 100 years since the Great War.

>11 avaland: I take that back, as she hath appeared!

A book I really enjoyed was The Vertigo Years by Philipp Blom, which is actually about the decade and a half leading up to WW1 but puts it all into sharp focus and context. Thought to be a golden era before WW1, Blom enlightens about this myth and shows how social and political conditions made WW1 an inevitability.

The Proud Tower by Barbara Tuchman is also excellent on the years before World War I, and was one of my favorite books the year I read it.

I've just finished reading The Poisonwood Bible, which I enjoyed greatly in parts and not so much in others. However, I am now keen to learn more about the history of the Congo/Zaire/DRC. Can anyone recommend a good work of non-fiction? Is Blood River any good?

I haven't read it, but there's King Leopold's Ghost, which I believe is about the Congo.

Incidentially, can someone recommend a good nonfictional overview of the French Revolution? I read The Tangled Thread last year, and it was somewhat confusing when it came to the history of the era.

The Oxford History of the French Revolution by William Doyle is a good narrative history. It is over 400 pages and so is not a quick read, but I found it very readable.

I liked Citizens by Simon Schama, which is, like his other books, very readable, but with a wealth of information.

Citizens is one of my planned summer reads; it's been on the TBR tool long and I should have time to focus on a tome over the summer.

#18 Thanks, Miela. I've made a note of that - it seems to be highly rated on LT.

My knowledge of the French Revolution is shockingly scant, so I can't offer any recommendations but I am grateful for those your question has generated!

Planning an anniversary trip to Yellowstone and Grand Tetons. Any good novels set there or good nonficiton about the region? Thanks.

When I was in Yellowstone, I was very interested in the reintroduction of wolves and read several books about that, including: The Return of the Wolf to Yellowstone and The Wolves of Yellowstone. These may be somewhat out of date. I also highly recommend Young Men and Fire, which isn't about Yellowstone or the Grand Tetons, but is about Montana.

#19-21, William Doyle has also written one of the 'very short introduction' guides to the French Revolution which clocks in at about 100 pages, and might be a useful counterpoint to other books. For example, while he recommends Citizens as a very good read, he points out that it doesn't engage with any of the historical debates over the impact of the revolution, focusing instead on the 'violence and slaughter'.

Incidentally, I just found out that when Zhou Enlai famously said that it was 'too early to say' what the historical impact of the French revolution was, he was actually talking about les événements and not the 18th century... I am curiously disappointed by this!

a really good straightforward uncontroversial narrative history of the French revolution for beginners is Days of the French Revolution by Christopher Hibbert.

for more in depth, controversial studies, go for George Lefebvre, or of course Carlyle

I also highly recommend Antonia Fraser's book on Marie Antionette, The Journey

#25 I just started Citizens yesterday, and in his introduction Schama discusses at some length why he decided to tell a narrative history instead of approaching the revolution more analytically or taking a longer-term historical perspective. It is quite a tome, but if I'm still interested in teh French revolution when I finish it I may turn to some of the other books recommended here.

Can't really recommend a good history or non-fiction treatment, but there are some wonderful novels that speak to your areas of interest: Nineteen Twenty-One, by Adam Thorpe, The Regeneration Trilogy by Pat Barker, and Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks.

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