“My aim in this book has been to use emblematic events from each month of 1916 as hooks for a series of reflections through which the astonishing range, variety and interconnectedness of the wartime experience can be charted.” The author accomplishes this goal with this quirky and thought-provoking book. This is not a complete history of WWI and is not meant to be. It does have some interesting photographs, and details you won’t find elsewhere. I treasure the anecdote about an internationally-themed concert by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, where musicians of French and German descent deliberately played out of tune in each other’s pieces. Stories like that maybe give you a window into how people were thinking.

1916 is a valuable addition to the recent work that tries to understand more than just the trench warfare on the Western Front. Not only actual battles (if you saw “The African Queen,” you can read about the real German gunboat that plied Lake Tanganyika) but the participation by laborers from Africa, India, and China, many of whom lost their lives and deserve better memorials.