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La Guerra Bianca. Vita E Morte Sul Fronte Italiano 1915-1919 (2009)

by Mark Thompson(Favorite Author)

3.92 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

885650295X (ISBN13: 9788856502954)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Il Saggiatore

review 1: This review is for anyone like me looking for an interesting book on World War I. This isn't it.We can pull up names and date from the internet. Writing about history especially war history requires the author to capture the spirit of the thing. To transport the reader to that place and time. Thompson does none of that. The majority of the work is spent on the politics behind the scenes. While that's a valid topic it isn't the one advertised on the cover. I think he spends more time covering poetry by proto-fascists than the war. The battles are dull and lifeless. And for a book about soldiers storming up alpine cliff faces in the meat grinder of "The Great War" that's a real shame.I'd only recommend this to history buffs with a desire for completeness and a large supply o... moref energy drinks.
review 2: Military history isn’t just about battle plans, maps, troop movements, logistics and the like, but they are essential elements if the overall picture of events is to be understood, particularly when the author is covering the activities on an entire front over a 4 year period. Sadly, in my view this book largely ignores these aspects in favour of lurid details and odd side-bar chapters.So, there’s no detail on why Italian mobilisation was so slow (potentially crucial, since as Thompson tells us, the Austrians were particularly weak on the Italian frontier when war was declared), how industry responded to the demands of being on a war footing, or some understanding of army organisation and how it developed during the war. Instead there are chapters on Scipio Slataper (who?), war poetry and the impact of the Futurists manifesto on Italian strategic military planning. War poetry is a perfectly reasonable topic, but why not integrate the observations into the main narrative rather than shoe-horning a chapter of literary criticism in.The authors’ interests really seem to lie outside the military details of the Italian WWI experience and had this book been titled ‘Italian nationalism 1915-1919 – its socio-political impact on the Italian front’, then I might have given it 3 stars. But, with a title like that, I wouldn’t have bought it in the first place! less

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