Stevenson David. 1914-1918: The History of the First World War

Penguin Books Ltd., 2004. — 784 p.This a very comprehensive and complete book about the First World War. In its wide and ample outlook nothing is left outside so you can bet for whatever topic you want and I can assure you that it is there. The book is organized in four parts, Outbreak, Escalation, Outcome and Legacy. Inside every part the themes are organized in chapters and discussed in a clear and orderly way so the themes are all related but never mixed in a heap of data. It is really impressive to realize how much the author knows about the topic, the dynamical context and, say, whatever you want. And being this the major advantage of the book it is, at the same time, its major weakness. David Stevenson is an expert in the Great War and as a good expert he knows about the previous world (the road that led to war) and about the post war world (the path that brought us to today). But along with being smart he is cold and plain. His tone is always the same. His tone is monotonous and never changes in more than seven hundreds pages with small size letters. The problem is not what he is telling you (which is always important) but the capacity that an average reader has of keeping his attention in the text. Any tiny distraction and you miss an entire paragraph. This is normal, but in this case to keep the concentration is not easy with a tone that never changes its frequency. Stevenson is not preoccupied in keeping your attention. The reader is not a problem for him.