Reviews
...provides an annotated reference to some 1,400 memoirs, diaries, and letters by soldiers and civilians from all belligerent nations during WWI. Organized by country, entries include incisive commentary on each entry's value to historians, enthusiasts, and collectors. Indexes allow readers to search by unit, front, personal perspective, and battle. The book serves as a guide to frequently overlooked and well-known titles in WWI literature., This work is an annotated list of post-war memoirs, diaries, and letters published in (or translated into) English by writers from Austria-Hungary, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, New Zealand, Russia, South Africa, Turkey, the United States, and several other countries. The author has included printed books or pamphlets found on the used book market or in a major state or international library and some rare typescripts held in the Library of Congress or the British Library...FewWorld War I veterans survive. About 4.7 million American men and thirty-three thousand women served in the military in that war. According to the Department of Veterans Affairs fewer than twenty-two hundred of its veterans are alive today. The war's diaries, letters, and memoirs have not captured the attention of Americans in the way that Civil War and World War II works have, and consequently few are in print. Furthermore, of those published many were put out by obscure publishers no longer in existence....The last meaningful selective bibliography of memoirs was War Books: A Critical Guide by Cyril Falls, published in London in 1930. World War I Memories is an admirable update of Falls's work....The work is organized alphabetically by countr, ...an important compact volume....Personal account and memoirs are important works for historians and students of history and, considering the paramount importance of the First World War, this volume should be a welcome addition to academic libraries. It is most important to libraries supporting graduate programmes or strong history departments. It is also interesting and affordable enough to be considered by smaller academic libraries or community colleges...
