World War I

Poetry Review: “One Hundred Visions of War” — Haiku in No Man’s Land

December 1, 2022
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This is a grim and uncomfortable book to read because it forces us to contemplate each small poem separately and then take them all together, a hard but necessary exercise.

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Film Review: “1917” — War is Hell, Up-Close

January 6, 2020
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George MacKay’s astonishing turn lifts 1917 from pyrotechnical marvel to a shattering emotional experience.

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Film Review: “Frantz” — The Changeable Color of Grief

April 3, 2017
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Frantz explores the complicated emotions generated by the aftermath of a catastrophic war.

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Film Review: “Sunset Song” — Misogyny in the Highlands

May 22, 2016
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I wanted to like Sunset Song, steeped as it is in Scottish history and scenery.

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Book Review: Blaise Cendrars’ Brilliant WW I Memoir — Surviving the “Shambles” of War

August 28, 2015
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The Bloody Hand stands alongside other autobiographical classics devoted to the First World War.

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Film Review: “The Water Diviner” — Starts Out Well But Takes a Dive

June 7, 2015
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Actor Russell Crowe’s directorial debut is visually gripping and very well acted — but its ending is disappointingly hokey.

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Poetry Review: “The New Oxford Book of War Poetry” — The Duty to Run Mad

April 8, 2015
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Editor Jon Stallworthy’s preference in this superb anthology is for poems that question, or provoke questions about, war.

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Book Review and Interview: “The Lost History of 1914” — Almost the War That Wasn’t

March 8, 2012
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In his exploration of history, Jack Beatty suggests that World War I, as we know it, was an improbable event.

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Book Review: To End All Wars

July 8, 2011
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“To End All Wars” embodies its themes –- the decline of the aristocracy, the rise of propaganda, the transformation of war-making, the heroism of resistance –- so skillfully in a dozen or so major characters and another dozen minor ones that this history of the First World War reads like a lively group biography.

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