A Weekend With the Great War: Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Great War Interconference Seminar, Lisle, Illinois, 16-18 September 1994 (Cantigny Military History Series)

Delivered papers and excerpts from panel discussions and question-and- answer periods are among the 15 contributions focusing on what later became World War I. Among the topics are whether the people in charge knew what they were doing, fortification architecture, the German soldier, master spy Sidney Reilly, the Medal of Honor, paradigm changes in the Russian historiography of the war, and cultural modernism. Paper edition (068-3), $24.95. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

This volume examines the crisis of 1914-18 in papers and related texts presented at a 1994 seminar jointly sponsored by the Great War Society and the Western Front Association. The contributors from the United States, Canada, Great Britain, France, Belgium, and Russia explore a range of topics, including the mysterious death of German fighter ace Manfred von Richthofen (the "Red Baron"), and the even more mysterious life of British master spy Sidney Reilly; American heroes and Canadian prisoners; German soldiers; French fortifications at Verdun; the doomed cause of Russian liberals; the Western Front as a bizarre parody of urban life, and the war itself as a radical expression of cultural modernism. The book features excerpts from panel discussions and question-and-answer sessions in which the seminar's attendees took part. The result is a work that sheds much light on a dark but fascinating chapter in twentieth-century history.