50th anniversary of a great book about the ‘Great War’

50th anniversary of a great book about the ‘Great War’

As a writer of non-fiction, the late Paul Fussell was one of the master distillers of the 20th Century, and by distiller I mean something like this: A writer who considers all — not only the general history of an examined period, but the cultural, political, social and commercial environment — and who extracts from all of that the essence of the times and its larger meanings. Most historians do this to some extent. Fussell did it on every page. …