The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front 1915-1919 - Hardcover

Thompson, Mark

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0465013295 ISBN 13: 9780465013296

Publisher: Basic Books, 2009

Synopsis

In May 1915, Italy declared war on the Habsburg Empire. Nearly 750,000 Italian troops were killed in savage, hopeless fighting on the stony hills north of Trieste and in the snows of the Dolomites. To maintain discipline, General Luigi Cadorna restored the Roman practice of decimation, executing random members of units that retreated or rebelled. With elegance and pathos, historian Mark Thompson relates the saga of the Italian front, the nationalist frenzy and political intrigues that preceded the conflict, and the towering personalities of the statesmen, generals, and writers drawn into the heart of the chaos. A work of epic scale, The White War does full justice to the brutal and heart-wrenching war that inspired Hemingways A Farewell to Arms.

About this title

Review:

The Weekly Standard
“[A] study as pioneering as it is brilliant.... Drawing on an impressive array of British, Italian, and Austrian sources, including fascinating interviews with survivors, Thompson re-creates the Italo-Austrian conflict in all its facets.... The White War is the work of a bright young historian proving his mettle.”

Dallas Morning News
“Thompson’s book is a comprehensive work following the causes, culture and combat of Italy’s war against Austria-Hungary and Germany.... It’s worthwhile reading and remembering, particularly when trying to comprehend what price victory.”

Robert Fox, Evening Standard
“Brilliant ... It is the first general history of the serial incompetence and brutality of the war in north-eastern Italy between 1915 and 1918, which makes it exceptional enough. In its elegant sweep of cultural and political as well as martial themes, it stands alone: it is one of the outstanding history books of the year.”

Christopher Duggan, Times Literary Supplement
“Mark Thompson’s wonderfully rich and poignant study, beautifully written and based on a detailed first-hand knowledge of the terrain in question as well as an impressive array of published Italian sources shows graphically why the events of 1915-18 had such a searing effect on the country’s national psyche.”

Max Hastings, New York Review of Books
“Mark Thompson, a young British writer, can claim a notable achievement with his narrative history of Italy’s World War I experience. With authority, sympathy, and unusual literary skill, he illuminates an aspect of the conflict about which some of us feel embarrassed to have known so little. The battlefield saga is sufficiently fascinating, but eclipsed by the portrait of Italy’s social and cultural experience within which the author sets it.... Thompson’s book gives a fascinating, indeed brilliant, portrait of a society immolated by its own delusions.”

The Economist (Best Books of the Year)
“A startling indictment of the Italian state’s conduct during the first world war, which shows how Italy’s nationalist dream of expansion would turn into the Fascist nightmare.”

John McCourt, Irish Times
“Brilliant... In presenting this conflict with such uncompromising focus and detail, Thompson has successfully accomplished a necessarily uncomfortable act of remembrance.... It should be hailed as the best account yet of what Hemingway described as ‘the most colossal, murderous, mismanaged butchery’ of the Great War and of the experiences of the vast majority of Italian soldiers who, in Giovanni Comisso’s words, had little or no knowledge of ‘what they had done, or why.’”

Peter Popham, Independent
“Thompson’s book is beautifully written, and he skillfully interweaves vivid accounts of military progress with telling vignettes about the more extraordinary figures caught up in the fighting.”

The Washington Times
“[Thompson’s] writing is so vivid, so detailed, so sobering that a reader must take an occasional break from the horrors he describes.”

Newark Star-Ledger
“[A] gripping, superbly written account...”

Michigan War Studies Review
“This is no ordinary work of military history.... Thompson’s narrative strategies make for an engaging, powerful book.... [A] richly textured account of a people and its army at war.”

MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History
“[A] memorable work.... [A] riveting description of World War I’s forgotten front.”

H-Net Reviews
“[I]lluminating.... [B]oth historians and general audiences with interest in the First World War will benefit from Thompson’s study as a contribution toward a more comprehensive, diverse picture of the war than the one to which most western readers are accustomed.”

Military Review
“This narrative of that frostbitten war draws from the work of generations of historians and writers (among them Ernest Hemingway) but gleans vignettes that display the passions of the time and the difficulty of changing a strategy mired in repeated failure.”

Journal of Military History
“Thompson writes well and his narrative flows smoothly and easily. He has the novelist’s ability to capture a character in a phrase, and produces some telling snapshots: Lloyd George’s ‘silver tongue’ and Clemenceau’s ‘salty charisma’ stand out.”

Choice
“[A] stunning account of repeated failure and despair, incompetence and opportunism; a human tragedy all too easily entered upon and pursued. In addition to sustained accounts of military engagements, there are vivid portraits of key figures, notably D’Annunzio and Mussolini.”

Book Description:

The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919 by Mark Thompson is the compelling and moving account of an unknown campaign of the First World War.

About this edition

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0465013295
• ISBN 13: 9780465013296
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 480