What has interested me more as a grad student is how The Great War and Modern Memory is as much a cultural document of the 1970's as it is a study of the First World War. Published in 1975, Paul Fussell has subsequently admitted that his book is "really about the Vietnam War as much as it is about the First World War." Fussell therefore did what historical scholars are, in theory, not supposed to do. He allowed his concern for the events of his own time to shape and inform his analysis of the past. The result in this case is nevertheless one of the most groundbreaking studies on the First World War, which has influenced almost all the scholarship that has followed. While I would agree with Jay Winter and many others that Fussell's study contains some interpretive (and a few factual) errors, it is still the book that I would offer to anyone who wanted to know why I became interested in trench newspapers (the subject of my MA Thesis) in the first place.
I am interested in what some of my friends in the UW grad program, most of whom study early-modern stuff, would offer as the book that really blew them away when they were undergrads. If any of you should come across this blog, please post your book of choice in the comments. I should probably learn to enjoy the early-modern period more anyway.
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