I just finished Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce by Stanley Weintraub. I'd known about the truce, but wanted to learn more.
I did learn more, but I can't really recommend the book.
Weintraub has a long resume as an award-winning historian, but this book was not that well written. He collected vignettes about the truce, but the book read more like just a string of such vignettes rather than a cohesive story and analysis of the truce. He even inserted passages from fictional accounts of the truce. After a while, it just seemed cluttered and tedious.
Then he tacked on a chapter about what might have happened if the truce had held that read more like an outline of a Harry Turtledove fictional alternative history than a real history.
And he even suggested that Shakespeare was referring to soccer when he coined the saying "the game's afoot." Seriously? Maybe Weintraub was like Trump and just joking?
I wonder if this book was something produced because he had to produce it, sort of like one of my students rushing to finish an essay the night before it is due?
Sorry to be so negative. As I said, I did learn something. I just could have learned as much in substantial essay or a book a third of the length of this one.
Pax et bonum
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