Cataclysm: The First World War as Political Tragedy by David Stevenson

I picked up this book because I know very little about WWI, but I'm afraid it did not meet my needs at all. The only reasion I finished it is because I make an effort to finish every book I start.

I was hoping to find out in general historical terms why and how the war started (but more specifically than "the Archduke was assassinated"), plus some human interest details on everyday life during the war for the soliders and the people back at home. Unfortunately, this book falls into a middle ground that completely missed what I was hoping to get out of it. The best way I can describe its focus is that it is similar to what I'd imagine the focus of the newspapers at the time to be. It was smaller than the general historical context because they didn't yet know the historical context at the time, but it ignored the details of human interest because people at the time didn't need their newspapers to tell them what they wore and how they occupied their time and what kinds of shortages there were. The book does a battle-by-battle play-by-play, name-dropping generals and politicans left and right. All of which is perfectly valid, but not what I hoped to get out of it.

This problem is exacerbated by several annoyances introduced by the publishers and editors. The typeface is slightly smaller than usual, so there are more words on the page than in most books. This discourages me from reading further; it is rather disheartening when you've only finished five pages in your 13-minute subway ride. I also found the copy-editing conventions hindered readability. I don't know whether it was a matter of author or editor preference, but the book ended up using commas only when strictly necessary, as though commas were a non-renewable resource, thus causing me to have to reread sentences and make a concerted effort to parse them. They also had the annoying habit of writing "nevertheless" as "never the less," thus making me want to stop reading, fish for a pen in my purse, and insert proofreader's marks indicating that I think it should be written as a single word.

Overall, I would say that this book is not worth the aggravation unless you already have a good understanding of WWI and need the book for academic research.