Philip's Reviews > World War I

Read this together with The World War I Book, another DK book in their new and so-far-interesting series of "Big Ideas Simply Explained," (which I'll review separately when finished*). However, as that one is considerably longer (it's a wordy "grown-up" book, vs. these EYEWITNESS books which are much more graphic/pictorial and so probably aimed at young readers, although I also really like 'em), I got through this one much faster. In fact, this book was pretty much like spending an afternoon looking at the exhibits and reading the signs in a very well-done war museum, like any of the excellent WWI museums in Belgium, or any of the major Civil War museums not far from where I live now.

So five stars for the book itself, as I'm a sucker for both the DK style and anything WWI. However…this has got to be at least the third if not fourth major redesign of the EYEWITNESS books since I starting reading them in the early '90s, and must say I'm not really enamored of the new design. But like all such print makeovers - magazines, newspapers, etc. - it usually takes a while to get used to the changes, and so I'm sure I'll eventually like this new format as well. Still, a jarring change from the earlier cover.

*Meanwhile, just two of the astonishingly horrific facts I learned in this book: during just the first day of the battle of the Somme, Germany killed or injured two British soldiers along every 3 feet of the 16-mile front; and by mid-1917, the British were firing over a million artillery shells PER DAY. And this was just the FIRST world war; since then we’ve obviously had a second, and I increasingly worry that we’re on the brink of a third - i.e., final - one…