A World Undone, by G. J. Meyer

This is an excellent choice for those who are looking for a good overall history of World War I, who have not studied this war before, or the background history of the major players.  For the amount of material it covers, it is a short book.  G. J. Meyer intersperses "Background" sections at well chosen points in his narrative, that give information about persons, countries, or other entities that the reader is about to encounter, such as the Ottoman Empire, for example, or the Romanovs.

This is only the second book I've read about World War I, after Barbara Tuchman's <i>Guns of August</i>, and compared to that book, which focuses primarily on the Western front, this one gives a more comprehensive view.

Fatima for Today, by Father Andrew Apostoli

We've just passed the centenary of the Fatima apparitions, so I wanted to learn more about them.  This book makes an excellent one stop shop about the apparitions.  Everything you could possibly want to know about them is in here.  Fr. Apostoli relates the content of what the three children saw, the historical context in which they happened, biographical information about the children and their families, and about the history of their town and of Portugal, how the Fatima apparitions were determined to be reliable, how they meshed with other preceding and contemporaneous apparitions given to other visionaries, the Church's interpretation of the visions, how successfully the Church has followed the instructions of our Lady, and how the predictions came to pass.  There is also practical information in the book about how to do the devotions properly, as well as the prayers taught to the three children.

The Origin of Russian Communism, by Nicolas Berdyaev

Excellent book on the various influences in Russian history, culture, and religion that helped shape how Communism was implemented in the Soviet Union. 

Berdyaev cites the Muscovite period and the reign of Peter the Great as particularly influential, because that was when the governments were most absolutist and repressive, using methods to control the population and the church that prefigured those used by the Bolsheviks. 

He cites the messianic cast of mind of the Russian Orthodox Church, which thought of Moscow as the Third Rome (after the fall of the Roman and Byzantine Empires) and believed that it had a great mission to fulfill in the world. Similarly, Soviet Russia took upon itself a special mission: it was the means by which communism was to be spread throughout the world. 

Berdyaev also discusses how the Russian Orthodox peasantry, unlike their Western Christian counterparts, never developed a strong concept of private property. They saw the land and its resources as belonging to God, and anyone who works them ought to be able to make a living off them. They had a feeling that the gentry were wrong to have such large estates, so that when the Bolsheviks began confiscating the estates and turning them into collective farms, the peasants were easily sold on the idea. 

Berdyaev himself was a disenchanted Marxist who converted back to the Russian Orthodox Church. He was among the exiles in the “philosophers’ ships” of the 1920’s, when Lenin threw out much of Russia’s dissident intelligentsia. Unfortunately, despite his disappointment with Marxism, Berdyaev did retain (at least at the time he wrote this book—I don’t know about later in life) the same mistake to which some Christians are prone: the view that socialism is a more moral economic system than the free market, and that there must be some way to make it work without resorting to evil means or evil results. 

Understanding Europe, by Christopher Dawson

This is an outstanding analysis of Europe and Western civilization.  The book is divided in two parts.

In the first part, Dawson describes what Europe is: a society of peoples whose culture was shaped both by Christianity and the Greco-Roman heritage.  Through comparisons, he explains what differentiates it from Asia, describes the special case of Russia, and discusses the regional differences among the different peoples.  These were produced by the splintering of Christianity during the Reformation and the different styles of government in the different regions, contrasting the parliamentary governments that sprung up in Western Europe with the large military empires that developed in Central and Eastern Europe.  He also devotes two chapters to Europe's overseas colonies: the dual nature of European colonialism and how each nation's colonial effort differed in character from one another.

The second part of the book is about the decline of Western culture and the revolt, starting in the eighteenth century, against the ideas and norms that used to unify Europe.  He describes the rise of the large totalitarian and authoritarian states, how the ideas behind this style of government originated in Hegelian philosophy, and how the two world wars came about.

For a relatively short (230 page) book, he covers a lot of ground, and it's definitely a book that you have to read more than once in order to properly digest the material.  It's best to have a reasonably good general knowledge of the history of the various European countries in order to appreciate this book properly.

The Guns of August, by Barbara Tuchman

Back in 2014, the first of the World War I centenary years, I decided to get informed about World War I since I knew so little about it and it is frequently cited as the cause of various negative developments in the modern world (not the least of which was World War II).  But I'm a procrastinator so it took three years to get my rear in gear.

This book served as a great start. It's a military history covering the first month of the war on the Western front, including the frantic diplomacy and negotiation on the few days before the outbreak of the war, particularly in Belgium.  It ends on the eve of the battle of the Marne.  Tuchman only dedicates two chapters on Eastern front battles (Gumbinnen and Tannenberg), and one on the pursuit of the German light cruiser Goeben in the Mediterranean which resulted in the Turkish alliance with Germany, so if you're looking for a history of the Eastern front and an account of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and his wife this is not it.

Tuchman is a skilled storyteller and includes just enough maps and technical information about military strategy and the technology of that time so a layman can understand the ramifications of the decisions made by the many generals, diplomats, monarchs, and politicians to whom he will be introduced. I had no problem following the progress of the war and learned a lot about the military thinking of the time. She also includes enough detail about the situations and people to draw the reader into the world of 1914. No mean feat.

Réflexions sur la révolution de Février, par Alexander Solzhenitsyn

In this book, Solzhenitsyn analyzes the toxic mix of conditions that brought about the events and consequences of three fateful days in St. Petersburg, from February 28-March 2, 1917 by the Julian calendar, or March 13-15, 2017 by the Gregorian.  Because of an insurrection in St. Petersburg, Czar Nicholas II abdicated the throne in favor of his brother Grand Duke Michael, who was equally disinclined to fulfill the obligations emperor.  Solzhenitsyn discusses how conditions, which only affected a small number of people, combined to destroy an enormous country, the majority of whose population were still attached to their traditions, their religion, and their way of life.  These include a lack of responsibility and sense of duty on the part of the royal family and government officials, the intelligentsia’s embrace of radical politics and revolutionary ideas, bad management of the military (which led to large numbers of inexperienced new recruits sitting idle in St. Petersburg), and the incompetence of the Kerensky government that replaced the monarchy.  Thus the Russian empire fell, not because of tyranny or high-handedness on the part of the Czar, but from weakness and lack of leadership.

American Diplomacy, by George F. Kennan

This book consists of six Walgreen lectures Kennan gave in the 1950's about the major wars the U.S. participated in, including the Spanish American War, World War I, and World War II, and his observations about American foreign policy during that time.  Also included is the famous "Long Telegram," which he sent to the State Department during his service as an ambassador.  It is a concise explanation of the ideology of the Soviet Union, their motivations, and how best to deal with them--apparently given as the answer to the question of why the Soviets were becoming less and less cooperative after World War II.

One of the main ideas behind the book is the warning that moral considerations should not be relied upon too much when determining foreign policy or entering wars.  He favors the approach more common in the 19th century and earlier of pursuing national interests because it limits military engagements to the accomplishment of well defined goals, rather than the unconditional surrender and regime change that characterized 20th century wars.  He got a (figurative) black eye for this idea from Alexander Solzhenitsyn during the latter's 1978 Harvard Commencement Address.  While the narrow pursuit of national interest made sense during the 19th century, when there was a strong moral consensus among the nations, it may be inadequate when dealing with totalitarian regimes whose moral outlook (or lack of one) is very different from one's own and lies at the very root of the war.

The Second World War: Milestones to Disaster, by Sir Winston Churchill

This is the first volume of the abridged version of Winston Churchill's series on the Second World War.  It mostly covers the events leading up to the war, from the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the formation of the League of Nations, the defense treaties of Locarno, and the unwise manner in which the treaties were enforced, with the former Allies putting undue emphasis on Germany's reparations payments while at the same time being lenient about seeing to it that Germany stayed disarmed.  Churchill also discusses how the economic conditions of the 1920's and 1930's destabilized German society and brought about conditions favoring Hitler's rise to the chancellorship and also the presidency after the death of Hindenburg. This book spans all the way up to the German takeover of Czechoslovakia and Poland, and Churchill's own rise to the prime ministership.  I would say that the most important lesson of the book is how the biggest war in history was brought about by an inordinate desire for peace.

Besides his knowledge and being one of the major players in World War II, Churchill is an excellent writer and storyteller.  I listened to the CD twice.  The reader of this audiobook, Christian Rodska, does an excellent job and his voice is somewhat like Churchill's so that you feel rather like the author himself is reading the book to you.

Defying Hitler, by Sebastian Haffner

If you ever wondered about how a highly educated, highly civilized country like Germany could fall under the power of a barbarian regime such as that of the Nazis, this is a very interesting book to read.  It is the memoir of a man who lived through World War I as a child and then through the transition from the Weimar Republic to the Third Reich as a young lawyer and aspiring judge. He

He draws connections between his childhood experiences during World War I and how they instilled a peculiar outlook towards war in him and in others of his generation.  He writes of the surreal atmosphere and loosened morality that prevailed during the runaway inflation of the early 1920's and how the military training/political indoctrination camps young judicial candidates were required to attend before they could get their credentials helped make them more receptive to regimentation under the Nazis.

The book is well written and I couldn't put it down.  I finished it in one weekend and will probably be rereading it in the near future.