On the first day Haig remarked ' we only lost 40,000 men, not as bad as expected' -unbelievable.
The book itself is regiment by regiment and what they did across the front which is really for super history buffs, so for the casual reader like me it drags a wee bit. But the excerpts from the diaries of the ordinary soldiers are heart breaking.
This history should be being taught as a lesson in not to listen to politicians.
A surprisingly dull small history of the American War of Independence, when I say dull I mean dull for McCullough.
For me it just ambled along stating fairly well known information with no great insight or even opinion from the author.
I've read lots of McCullough's other work and been fascinated but this was just dull , in fact it has the feel of a book written to complete a contract.
A very interesting read but a bit of a cheek stating its start at 3000 BC, the first 3000 years were written off in about 40 pages.
After that when proper records were kept things got interesting. I assume there is a trick to remembering your Henrys from your Georges through the centuries but I don't know it so I stopped trying to remember which king was which and just enjoyed the ride.
A bit disappointing. The book focus's on a group of women who were still alive around 2014, all of whom worked at Bletchley., all were in their 90's at the time of interview by the author.
The book consists of mini biographies of each of these ladies, all who were very clever and played an important war time role.
The negatives for me was the author referring to the women by their Christian names throughout, which got very confusing for my small brain and as stated above it is more biography regarding their childhoods' etc leading up to the war years. Personally for me I wanted to know more of what they did at Bletchley rather than what they did on Saturday night.
