World War I: A Short History Was

World War I: A Short History was written by Michael Lyons at a time thought by many to be the end of history: 1993. As such, his work proves to flow well and be carefully analytic, lacking the un-necessary bravado and patriotism to be expected of post-911 history books.

A professor of history who earned his PhD from the University of Minnesota in 1969, Lyons has served on the faculty of North Dakota State University for 17 years, managing to develop a careful understanding of the two chief conflicts of the 20th century while recounting their specifics while head of the History Department. This position he maintained until 1989, when his first book, World War II: A Short History won him critical acclaim. After his retirement in 1993, the State Board of Higher Education named him Professor Emeritus.

Although his repertoire is limited to these two books, they are well regarded among scholars for their readability and clarity. In World War I: A Short History, the author seeks to give us an understanding of the nature of the conflict, starting with the socio-economic conditions, foreign policy atmosphere and general sensibilities of the continental leaders that started the Great War. From there he goes on to describe the war itself, from the trenches to American involvement to the effect of the conflict on communist revolutions in eastern Europe.

He concludes by showing how the Germans defeated themselves with the idealist principles that dominated the idyllic campus lives of trench-shirkers and leaves us with Europe unsettled and waiting for round two while America's young heroes suffer in anguish from a particularly bad flu season. He manages to provide a concise survey and is careful not to mire himself in a prolonged, fruitless struggle for the reader's attention.

In the 1999 addition, Lyons appeals to his visceral audience by adding a section that conveyed the appalling conditions facing soldiers at the front, which included the seemingly endless barrage of artillery and fatal offences across no-man's land that resulted in millions of deaths. He gives a graphic account of the rats, lice, and death-stench that permeated the front line from the North Sea to the Swiss frontier.

Lyons spares us the History Channel-esque literary cinematography typical of Stephen Ambrose and other historians geared to the "When We Were Soldiers" demographic of old American couch potatoes who fought in the European theater: his audience is that of students who wish to explore the war from an objective perspective. In this respect, Lyons does not fail us: his is a synthesis of interpretations; while acknowledging well-documented preconceptions held during the war (i.e.

this conflict will be short because white people are chivalrous; we can all finish this, prove that we're men, pen a few entries in our diaries and get back to London or Vienna in time for Fall, 1914's classes) he doesn't take ideological stances such as the ones that have plagued many of the war's historians. For instance, Communists love to indulge a class-struggle based history of the war, as it reflects their opinion that class struggle underscores all history.

Lyons doesn't worry himself with the respective doings of the continental bourgeois and proletariat or their societies, instead focusing on politics and the military. He instead portrays the dangerous web weaved by statesmen in attempting to resolve economic territoriality and competitive imperial economies in a manner that is both fair and enlightening, citing such examples as the attempted consolidation of the central powers with their African holdings by way of a railroad that would stretch from Berlin through Istanbul and down into Africa.

He pays close attention to the pan-Slavism of the Russians and the waning days of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empire at the hands of Turkic and German nationalism. Lyons also provides us with biographical sketches of the key players in the conflict, acknowledging the role of individuals in the escalation that would lead to war. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Lyons also manages to satisfy his readers with an account of the wartime battles and strategies employed, playing both the role of a regular historian and a tactical one.

He covers the nature of the conflict from.