The Beauty and the Sorrow: An Intimate History of the First World War
“Intense and bighearted . . . The best books about World War I have often been oblique, like Paul Fussell’sGreat War and Modern Memory,or novels, like Erich Maria Remarque’sAll Quiet on the Western Front,rather than comprehensive histories. Englund’s volume joins an unconventional pantheon . . . The accounts of [these] lives can be terrifying or stirring, but are most fully alive in Englund’s accumulation of small moments, stray details . . . His book has the most devastating ending I can remember in a piece of nonfiction.”—The New York Times“A wonderfully wide and rich mosaic of personal experience from the First World War.”—Antony Beevor, author ofStalingradandD-Day: The Battle for Normandy “Powerful and compelling . . . Of the many books about the First World War this is among the most strikingly original . . . Almost every page of Englund’s book is fresh and revelatory.”—Daily Express(UK) “Englund covers a lot of ground inThe Beauty and the Sorrow,geographically, topically, and in point of view . . . Englund succeeds in his goal to humanize the war.”—Dallas Morning News“Englund frees individual experience from the collective cloak of history and geography [in] this extraordinary book . . . The details build like a symphony.”—Mail on Sunday(UK) “They call them the lost generation, but you’ll find their story here.”—New York Post“A brilliant feat of retrospective journalism . . . Englund’s deft collation provides insights into more than the carnage . . . This book fleshes out the grim statistics of the Great War . . . The eloquence of everyday participants will link the reader to the era when the origins of the ensuing century’s conflicts became apparent.” —Publishers Weekly(starred)“An exquisite book . . . There are adventures and battles, of course, but also many moments of quiet contemplation with closely observed details of street scenes, restaurants, railway stations, and deserted battlefields . . . By turns pithy, lyrical, colorful, poignant, and endlessly absorbing.”—Kirkus Reviews(starred) “[There are] hundreds of eerie, moving, upsetting, and surprising incidents from the First World War within this extraordinary book . . . Like a great novel,The Beauty and the Sorrowmanages to be both more universal and more particular [than other books on WWI]. Peter Englund frees individual experience from the collective cloak of history and geography . . . The details build like a symphony . . . Englund writes with a calm clarity, beautifully conveyed by his translator.”—Mail on Sunday(5 stars, UK) “Anthologies of war reminiscences are often lazy stuff, mere compilations of extracted passages from diaries and letters . . . [But] Englund’s choice of witnesses and his use of their material are admirably judged. This is an anthology well above the common run . . . This is a book about men and women living at the outer edge of human experience.”—Max Hastings,Sunday Times(UK)“Peter Englund is one of the finest writers of our time on the tactics, the killing and the psychology of war. InThe Beauty and the Sorrowhe superbly and humanely brings to life all the tragedy, chaos, death and gunsmoke of battle.”—Simon Sebag Montefiore, author ofStalinandYoung Stalin “The book is a masterpiece . . . as entertaining as [it is] thrilling. Peter Englund has truly outdone himself.”—Svenska Dagbladet(Sweden) “Magisterial . . . The Great War from the inside. As vivid as real life. Never has there been such an up-close, intimate and at the same time harrowing encounter with the military aspects of this war. No one has ever told World War I like Peter Englund tells it.”—El País(Spain) “A magnificent book: you can feel their breathing on your skin. So near, so overwhelming.”—Geert Mak, author ofIn Europe: Travels Through the Twentieth Century “The Beauty and Sorrowhas given me the most intense reading experience [I’ve had] in a very long time. Englund is a genius in portraying scenes, in which his actors perform with great intensity, in an often poetic way.”—Dagens Nyheter(Sweden) “Englund’s work is exquisite. As a historian, his skill is astonishing. But the prose—spare, painstakingly detailed and intimate—is the work of another Englund, of an extremely powerful storyteller.”—Qué Leer(Spain) “Until now I had only read two books on the First World War that I found absolutely essential. The first is Erich Maria Remarque’sAll Quiet on the Western Front. The second isThe Guns of Augustby Barbara Tuchman, an intelligent work by an accomplished historian.The Beauty and the Sorrowis a good complement to these two.”—La Vanguardia, Culturas(Spain)