Paris_ The Collected Traveler - Barrie Kerper [22]
France Under the Germans: Collaboration and Compromise, Philippe Burrin (New Press, 1996). None other than Robert Paxton—an internationally recognized expert on Vichy France who served as an expert witness at the trial of Maurice Papon in 1997—referred to this work as “unsurpassed.” It’s thorough and exhaustively researched. Burrin, a Swiss historian, focuses on three sections of French society that accommodated the Germans: French government, civil society, and a small but significant circle of journalists, politicians, and “ordinary” French people who voiced collaborationist opinions. Burrin seeks to dissect the meaning of the word “collaboration” itself, as it was first used by Marshal Pétain in October 1940 and then passed into German as Kollaboration. No photos but a good map showing where the free and occupied zones began and ended.
The Great War: Perspectives on the First World War, edited by Robert Cowley (Random House, 2003). In his introduction, Cowley writes that a good argument may be made that the Great War was the true turning point of the century just past: “It brought down dynasties and empires—including the Ottoman, one of the roots of our present difficulties. It changed the United States from a provincial nation into a world power. It made World War II inevitable and the Cold War as well. It created the modern world—and that greatest of growth industries, violent death.” Cowley is founding editor of MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, and the thirty essays, articles, and letters featured in this volume originally appeared in MHQ. In addition to writing eight other books, Cowley has traveled the entire length of the western front, from the North Sea to the Swiss border.
The Greatest Generation, Tom Brokaw (Random House, 1998). Brokaw opens his acknowledgements by saying, “When I first came to fully understand what effect members of the World War II generation had on my life and the world we occupy today, I quickly resolved to tell their stories as a small gesture of personal appreciation.” If, amidst all the hype and publicity this book received, you missed reading it, I encourage you to pick it up—it’s truly wonderful, as are Brokaw’s other books, An Album of Memories: Personal Histories from the Greatest Generation and The Greatest Generation Speaks: Letters and Reflections, all published by Random House in hardcover and paperback editions.
The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman (Macmillan, 1962; Ballantine, 1994). William Shirer, mentioned above, described this as “one of the finest books of our time,” and I completely concur. I love this book, and the paperback Ballantine edition includes a foreword by Robert K. Massie, who explains in his final paragraph that Tuchman’s opening paragraph took her eight hours to complete and was the most famous passage in the book. Massie’s own concludes with “By turning the page, the fortunate person who has not yet encountered this book can begin to read.” Sometimes I wish I were that fortunate person all over again! Tuchman, who passed away in 1989, not only wrote an outstanding book, but her own family’s history is intertwined with the early events of World War I: she was two years old when she and her parents were crossing the Mediterranean en route to Constantinople to visit her grandfather Henry Morgenthau, Sr., who was then ambassador to Turkey (her uncle was Henry Morgenthau, Jr., Roosevelt’s secretary of the Treasury for over twelve years). They witnessed British cruisers in pursuit of the German battleship Goeben, which successfully eluded the British, reached Constantinople, “and brought Turkey and with it the whole Ottoman Empire of the Middle East into the war, determining