Ted H. Kim's Weblog

Monday October 18, 2004

Complete Idiot's Guide to World War I

You have probably seen these orange "Idiot's Guides" and the competing "for Dummies" series in most bookstores you go to these days. So given my interest in militray history, I decided to try the Complete Idiot's Guide to World War I by Alan Axelrod.

To most people, World War I is about a depressing and horrific, bloody trench warfare stalemate. While that is part of World War I (mostly on the Western front), it is not the complete picture. There was a lot more going on. On the purely military side, you can talk about the Russian, Italian, Balkan, Middle-Eastern and colonial fronts. Many of these fronts were quite fluid. Then there is the early aerial warfare and the naval war including submarines. Plus, there is the political background of the interlocking alliances, the Russian Revolution, America's isolationism, President Wilson's idealism, the League of Nations and the Treaty of Versailles.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to World War I is a fairly comprehensive, but somewhat high level history of World War I. The book is interesting to read and contains a lot of sidebars to define terms and provide background biographical data. Most of the definitions are too elementary for any serious military historian, but remember this is history for the masses. As military history, the book is fairly high level. For in depth descriptions of the battles, you probably need to go elsewhere. But the fatal flaw is a lack of maps. Not just too few -- basically none at all. If don't already know European geography of the period (e.g. where the Austro-Hungarian empire is), you may be confused. Having a WWI atlas handy will help a lot, but that is not something you would expect the populist target audience to have. So overall I can't recommend this book.

In board wargames, WWI has experienced a renaissance of sorts in the last decade. I think a large part of this is due to the games that Ted Racier has designed, including the highly rated Paths of Glory. But how can I look at even more games? Maybe Cyberboard will help.

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(2004-10-18 15:01:36.0) Permalink