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I highly recommend this WWI memoir by this German soldier for anyone with a love of history and the desire to understand the humanity involved on both sides if a conflict. This is chilling and heartbreaking.

Intense battle scenes ranging across the European countryside & with minimal character development. No, I'm not talking about the 2019 film "1917," but Ernst Jünger's cinematic & graphic WW1 memoir, "Storm of Steel."
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In the introduction, translator Michael Hoffman writes, "It makes no personal appeal. It is a notably unconstructed book. It does not set its author and his experience in any sort of context. It offers nothing in the way of hows and whys, it is pure where & when..." This is paradoxically the book's greatest strength & weakness. Junger's account of the war has an impressionistic, cinematic feeling to it that is shocking for its honest depiction ?

"I think I have found a comparison that captures the situation in which I and all the other soldiers who took part in this war often found ourselves: you must imagine you are securely tied to a post, being menaced by a man swinging a heavy hammer. Now the hammer has been taken back over his head, ready to be swung, now it's cleaving the air towards you, on the point of touching your skull, then it's struck the post, and the splinters are flying.."

I heard that the earlier edition of #StormofSteel by #ErnstJünger was more gruesome so I did some searching and got a copy from my school library! We don't have to read it for class, just the more recent edition but I'm curious Sooooo 🤓🤓🤓 This is just the first page and there's already some edits #history #worldwar

A sentry collapses, streaming blood. Shot in the head...the stretcher-bearers come along, to carry him to the dressing-station...No sooner has the man disappeared then everything is back to the way it was before. Someone spreads a few shovelfuls of earth over the red puddle, and everyone goes back to whatever he was doing before. One has got to callous.

Sometimes you have to start at the beginning! #1920 read for #192019. Also #1001books read 171 for me. And #LitsyAtoZ #LetterJ

I live in an 75-year-old neighborhood with lots of flying-themed street names--Kittyhawk, Earhart, Glider, Airlane, Airport, De Haviland, Wiley Post, and so on. TIL where Bleriot Ave got its name.

#readjanuary #readingequipment A book, a bookmark, a blanket, a cat. Sometimes a drink, rarely a snack. For this book, googlemaps, to follow the tour of one German NCO in the WWI trenches of northern France. And also I need my phone to translate--German (which I can't read), French (I'm at about 75% right), Italian (no problem), and Latin (big problem) all pop up in this English book translated from German.

Starting now! I don't usually read war books, so we'll see how this goes. #192019 #1920 #1001books

Library book haul! Three books that work with #litsyAtoZ #192019 #1001books #pulitzer and a #screenplay (I've never read a screenplay!).