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A review by socraticgadfly
1916: A Global History by Keith Jeffery
medium-paced
2.25
Couldn't see it as a full 3 stars at the other site. Not even 2.75 here. Debated 2.25 and 2.5 before going with the former.
Jeffery has an interesting "hook" concept, but executes it unevenly, then makes "the fatal error" of WWI books, then has additional errors.
The "hook" is to look at the war month by month, with one big issue for each month, then extending that issue to other ongoing war issues.
He starts with a cheat for January 1916 — the evacuation from Gallipoli. The info itself is OK (and I did learn that Attlee served there), but nothing special, and not much extended.
February is a no-brainer: Verdun.
March is another cheat, with title of "On the Isonzo," while noting it's in medias res because this is the Fifth Battle of the Isonzo. April? The Easter Uprising, with Jeffery at the end trying to tie Ireland to Belgium. I don't really see that close of a connection; Jeffery teaching at an Irish university has a different angle, but I don't have to agree.
May is a no-brainer: Jutland. In the extension, and put an asterisk here, Jeffrey never discusses the illegality of British blockades in detail.
June? Eastern Front, specifically the Brusilov Offensive.
July: The Kazakhs and other Tsarist Central Asian peoples pushing back against conscription, inflation, etc. The one chapter where I actually learned anything much.
August: "The War in Africa," with the August 1916 Battle of Morogoro being an again contrived hook.
September: The Somme, another cheat, since the battle started in late June.
October: Eastern Mediterranean and the Balkans, with the hook being the October landing of British and French troops in Greece. Learned a few bits about the details of the war splits within Greece and Entente maneuvering, but nothing major.
November: Wilson's election, and Jeffery's "fatal error" of claiming the fake neutral Wilson was a real neutral. Normal 1-star ding. But Jeffery gets worse when he claims that Wilson actually stood up for US rights but presents ZERO evidence of Wilson standing up against the British blockade by extension or use of food as a blockade weapon, and that's because there is no such evidence. So, by protesting too much, the ding is more than 1 star.
December: Rasputin's assassination. Loses at least another quarter-star here for falsely insinuating Rasputin was a Germanophile, thus morphing and mouthing his assassins. The truth? Yes, off inside evidence from him of planned dates of offenses, many Russians made killings in the stock market. No evidence that anybody directly connected to Rasputin was selling secrets to Germany. Definitely no evidence that Rasputin was Germanophile. That said, at the start of the war, he warned the Tsar himself that entering it would likely be destructive to Russia.
And, with that said, and re the WWI reading odyssey I'm on right now (Christopher Clark's "The Sleepwalkers")? Though the book gets two stars and change, not one, I won't read Jeffery again.
Jeffery has an interesting "hook" concept, but executes it unevenly, then makes "the fatal error" of WWI books, then has additional errors.
The "hook" is to look at the war month by month, with one big issue for each month, then extending that issue to other ongoing war issues.
He starts with a cheat for January 1916 — the evacuation from Gallipoli. The info itself is OK (and I did learn that Attlee served there), but nothing special, and not much extended.
February is a no-brainer: Verdun.
March is another cheat, with title of "On the Isonzo," while noting it's in medias res because this is the Fifth Battle of the Isonzo. April? The Easter Uprising, with Jeffery at the end trying to tie Ireland to Belgium. I don't really see that close of a connection; Jeffery teaching at an Irish university has a different angle, but I don't have to agree.
May is a no-brainer: Jutland. In the extension, and put an asterisk here, Jeffrey never discusses the illegality of British blockades in detail.
June? Eastern Front, specifically the Brusilov Offensive.
July: The Kazakhs and other Tsarist Central Asian peoples pushing back against conscription, inflation, etc. The one chapter where I actually learned anything much.
August: "The War in Africa," with the August 1916 Battle of Morogoro being an again contrived hook.
September: The Somme, another cheat, since the battle started in late June.
October: Eastern Mediterranean and the Balkans, with the hook being the October landing of British and French troops in Greece. Learned a few bits about the details of the war splits within Greece and Entente maneuvering, but nothing major.
November: Wilson's election, and Jeffery's "fatal error" of claiming the fake neutral Wilson was a real neutral. Normal 1-star ding. But Jeffery gets worse when he claims that Wilson actually stood up for US rights but presents ZERO evidence of Wilson standing up against the British blockade by extension or use of food as a blockade weapon, and that's because there is no such evidence. So, by protesting too much, the ding is more than 1 star.
December: Rasputin's assassination. Loses at least another quarter-star here for falsely insinuating Rasputin was a Germanophile, thus morphing and mouthing his assassins. The truth? Yes, off inside evidence from him of planned dates of offenses, many Russians made killings in the stock market. No evidence that anybody directly connected to Rasputin was selling secrets to Germany. Definitely no evidence that Rasputin was Germanophile. That said, at the start of the war, he warned the Tsar himself that entering it would likely be destructive to Russia.
And, with that said, and re the WWI reading odyssey I'm on right now (Christopher Clark's "The Sleepwalkers")? Though the book gets two stars and change, not one, I won't read Jeffery again.