The Great War and Modern Memory: The Illustrated Edition Hardcover – November 3, 2009

This book does not need to be reviewed by me! It is a great classic, and it was from its first publication date in the 1970's. I read it back then and remember it with pleasure and admiration after all this time. It reads as easily as a novel, in part because Fussell just writes so well, and in part because he has such a lively and original mind. It has not staled in all these years, indeed, it is as fresh and thought provoking as ever.

I very much enjoyed this book. I thought the early sections were very interesting about the sociology and language of the common soldier, but it dragged a bit at the end.Loved Paul Fussell's book "Class" so thought this was worth a shot and it was. If you like history books, you should definitely try this one.

Fussell's book on WWI (or the Great War) details the specifics of the Western Front for the British and connects the war and how memories of the war with irony. He argues that situations and details of the war itself are ironic (such as the proximity of the trenches on the Western Front to England and the language used to described the war as sporty). He also suggests that people use irony to remember the war, including the literature from the war. The photographs, maps, and illustrations are amazing and add so much to the book.

Simply the best book of its kind in print. Fussel really gets at the heart of the propaganda that drove WWI and how it still affects us today.

Fussell has caught the exquisite tension between the hideous reality of trench warfare and the equally hideous awakening of the participants. The irony of our inability to prevent war happening again does not escape me.

WWI and poetry . . . and fiction . . . written by a master who had seen combat, nothing more to say except R.I.P Paul Fussell, the world is emptier without you.

I read the Fussell book in the Oxford paperback edition of 1977, and enjoyed it very much. (And not only because Fussell was my professor of poetry and creative writing at Rutgers many, many years ago) Fussell has joined the literary sound and sense of the war with his personal experience (II World War) of a soldier "in the trenches". Literary and military speak are brought together in a very exciting and revealing description of the honor and dishonor of war. I bought the illustrated edition in celebration of Fussell'swork. It is a good introduction to how fine literature can describe the brutality of war in a measured Augustan diction.

copy beyond its description -- thanks!