The Best War Stories

Fülszöveg

War is not, and has never been, the sole concern of Men at Arms, and both the imminence and aftermath of the state of war produce as much drama and terror as the war itself.
The stories in this volume have been chosen to show as many of the difierent faces ofwar as possible. Naomi Mitchison's view of Greeks and Romans at war is chillingly realistic and Raleigh's contemporary view of the loss of the Revenge glows with the passionate patriotism of the Elizabethan age.
The spread of literacy in the Western world gave the story-teller a greatly-enlarged audience, one that soon encompassed (as war had always done) all walks of Hfe. Ambrose Bierce, a farmer's son from Ohio, served in the American Civil War; Tolstoy, a Russian aristocrat, spent four years in the army. Both writers told the truth about what they had seen and a new element entered the chronicles of war.
The First World War produced Remarque's classic All Quiet on the Western Front, The Death of a Hero, the poems of... Tovább

Fülszöveg

War is not, and has never been, the sole concern of Men at Arms, and both the imminence and aftermath of the state of war produce as much drama and terror as the war itself.
The stories in this volume have been chosen to show as many of the difierent faces ofwar as possible. Naomi Mitchison's view of Greeks and Romans at war is chillingly realistic and Raleigh's contemporary view of the loss of the Revenge glows with the passionate patriotism of the Elizabethan age.
The spread of literacy in the Western world gave the story-teller a greatly-enlarged audience, one that soon encompassed (as war had always done) all walks of Hfe. Ambrose Bierce, a farmer's son from Ohio, served in the American Civil War; Tolstoy, a Russian aristocrat, spent four years in the army. Both writers told the truth about what they had seen and a new element entered the chronicles of war.
The First World War produced Remarque's classic All Quiet on the Western Front, The Death of a Hero, the poems of Wilfred Owen and others; from behind the lines Somerset Maugham's stories stripped the glamour from espionage, exposing it for the cold-blooded nightmare it really was. Romance was banished forever from war stories.
The Second World War, a total war, involved most of the world - and a new generation of writers made some memorable contributions to the literature of it. Japan and the South Pacific tested the courage and resilience of British and Americans to the limit; the flying oificer and the merchant seaman acquired a well-deserved heroic status, and civilians were in the track of armies as never before.
And while World Wars may come to an end struggles continue and the powerful continue to wreak havoc in their ruthless efforts to preserve the status quo. Nadine Gordimer's tragedy of a well-intentioned chieftain in South Africa makes the point with laconic power. Vissza