JUNE WRAP UP: What I Read This Month

Hi everyone! Welcome to Bibliophilia Book Reviews. Today, I’ll be talking about all the books I read in June. This month I read 7 books, three of which are nonfiction military history books about World War I and 3 are dystopias. I usually don’t read dystopias but I don’t regret reading these. In fact, one of them is my best read of the month. Here are my thoughts about them: 

1. HISTORY AND WWI: The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman

The Guns of August is the most famous book written about World War I. It is a straight-forward, thoroughly researched and clear account of the negotiations among the Great Powers that led to the outbreak of World War I in August 1^st, 1914. The bungled diplomacy between the Central and Allied Powers, Tuchman states, is what caused the war, and the result was four years of trench warfare.

But before talking about the decisions that led to the outbreak of WWI on August 1^st and the July Crisis in 1914 that culminated with the death of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on July 28th, Tuchman takes us back to 1870 and 1910. In 1870, the Battle of Sedan was fought during the Franco-Prussian War, and it resulted in a huge demoralizing defeat for the French. The Germans, on the other hand, captured Emperor Napoleon III and annexed the territories of Alsace and Lorraine to Germany. Hence, the Germans felt themselves on top of the world and their victory fueled their sense of destiny and superiority. The French, for their part, were humiliated and itching for revenge.

Then we fast-forward to 1910, when all the key players of European politics of the era—end of the 19^th century and the beginning of the 20^th—are attending the funeral of the British king Edward VII. Edward VII, Wilheim II, and Czar Nicholas II, were all cousins, descendants of Queen Victoria, and WWI was very much a family affair. Wilheim did not like Edward VII because the British king encouraged British ties with France and Russia to counteract Germany’s rise in power. Albert of Belgium, another king who attended the funeral of Edward VII in May 1910, denied the Germans entry into his country in 1914 to attack France. The fact that Germany enter Belgian territory anyway, violating Belgium neutrality, really cemented the image of Germany as the aggressor in this war.

The Guns of August is a classic of military history. It isn’t about how WWI began  (more about that later in my review for The Sleepwalkers by Christopher Clark) but about the military plans of France and Germany before the war, plans that were based on the “cult of the offensive” policy, where it was believed that the next war was going to be won by whoever attacked first and hardest, and how the Great Powers implemented those plans during the first month of the war. These plans were Plan 17, implemented by the French, and the Schlieffen Plan, executed by the Germans in their attack on Paris.

In school, we learn that WWI broke out with the assassination of the Austria-Hungarian archduke and heir to the throne Franz Ferdinand. So what does Tuchman say about this topic? Nothing. In fact, Austria-Hungary and its conflicts with Serbia aren’t even mentioned in the book. Serbia as a political player in Europe of 1914 isn’t even acknowledged and Austria-Hungary, on the other hand, is only given three lines: “‘Some damned foolish thing in the Balkans,’ Bismarck had predicted, would ignite the next war. The assassination of the Austrian heir apparent, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, by Serbian nationalists on June 28, 1914, satisfied his condition. Austria-Hungary, with the bellicose frivolity of senile empires, determined to use the occasion to absorb Serbia as she had absorbed Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1909.” Tuchman does not give Serbia and Austria-Hungary the importance, that in my opinion, they are due, because “our experience and culture most directly derive from the Anglo-American and West European world … the East European world, though important, it is a separate tradition” (The Proud Tower, xvi). Personally, I don’t think Tuchman considers Austria-Hungary all that important. After all, this empire was led by an 83 year old man, who, like the empire he ruled over, was close to death.

I read The Guns of August after The Proud Tower by the same author, back to back, but I was also reading The Sleepwalkers by Christopher Clark at the same time, and I highly recommend reading this one first and then The Guns of August. The Sleepwalkers was published in 2012. I recommend reading them in this order because times have changed since The Guns of August was first published in 1962, and Tuchman’s book is noticeably more biased by popular opinion and the political events occurring at the time of its publication, aka the Cold War, than The Sleepwalkers, which has benefited of 60 years of scholarly debate on the topic. I will talk about The Sleepwalkers a bit more below, but it is worth pointing out that Clark’s book ends in 1914 while Tuchman’s begins in 1914, so reading them back to back like I did gives a reader valuable insight into the political background of The Great War.

I highly recommend this book.

2. DYSTOPIAN AND CLASSICS: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

The main topics of this book are the conflict between individual freedom and societal stability, the suppression of emotions and individuality and the pursuit of happiness at the expense of truth and meaning. In this future world, technology, conditioning and a rigid caste system control every aspect of human life. Natural reproduction is replaced by artificial reproduction and people are conditioned for predetermined roles. In this novel, Huxley highlights the dehumanizing effects of a highly controlled and pleasure-driven culture to the detriment of a person’s individuality and freedom. In addition, the novel raises important ethical questions about the role of science, technology, and government in shaping human society.

Brave New World was published in 1932, a year before Hitler became Chancellor of Germany and led the world to a second world war. It imagines a pain-free but meaningless world. The main characters are Bernard Marx and John The Savage; Bernard symbolizes the manipulation of the government and John The Savage symbolizes that individual freedom that is sacrificed for the sake of pleasure. Ultimately, John The Savage cannot live in a society that controls every aspect of his individuality and he ends up killing himself.

Personally, I did not like this book. I get, however, why it is included in lists of classic literature books you need to or should read. Today, society seeks an existence centered on comfort or pleasure as a goal in life, and this hedonistic existential pursuit in life is exactly what Huxley is criticizing. When comparing Brave New World with 1984, a book that I talk about below, the critic Neil Postman said in 1985: What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Published in the interim between the two world wars, it is said that this book reflects what the world is like today more accurately than 1984. This is true both in the fact that society today seeks entertainment as a form of ultimate relaxation and pleasure and in our innate aversion to discomfort. 

I recommend reading this book as food for thought. But that doesn’t mean I liked it, and I did not.

3. DYSTOPIAN AND CLASSICS: Animal Farm by George Orwell

Animal Farm by George Orwell is an allegory of Bolshevik Russia leading to Stalin’s rise in power. The story begins with Orwell’s loss of faith in communism and how the idea of working for the communal benefits of all and all people being equal is hijacked by those who take the lead in government. In other words, those who have power at the tip of their fingers cannot escape the temptation to dominate those they’re governing. And Orwell wanted to explain in Animal Farm what happened in Russia after Lenin died, Czar Nicholas II was deposed from the throne, and how Stalin rose eventually to absolute power.

The pigs represent the communist party and two pigs, Napoleon and  Snowball, are the ones vying for leadership after the death of Major. Scholars believe that Major represents either Karl Marx or Vladimir Lenin. After Lenin’s death, the communist party divided in two factions, one led by Stalin and another by Trotsky. In Orwell’s book, Napoleon symbolizes Stalin while Snowball symbolizes Leon Trotsky. Farmer Jones is Czar Nicholas II, and he is kicked out of the farm after the animals rebel against him. This represents the Russian Revolution, which culminated in the death of Czar Nicholas II and his family and the abolishment of the Russian Empire. Eventually, Snowball is chased out of the farm never to come back again. Now, the gaslighting begins and Napoleon assumes absolute power. Gaslighting at its finest, actually. Squealer, the third pig in the story, represents Stalin’s propaganda machine and he is instrumental in making the other animals believe anything Napoleon says. He represents Molotov, Stalin’s Minister of Foreign Affairs during WWII. Boxer, the horse, who thinks that Napoleon can do no wrong, symbolizes the cult of Stalin. Molly represents the bourgeoisie, who escaped Russia altogether. The raven depicts the Church, which dabbles in politics and tries to help the deposed Czar and other aristocrats to recover power at one time, leaves again, and then returns and is tolerated by Napoleon because he ultimately recognizes the validity of religion to keep people in their place. Benjamin the donkey is a symbol for Orwell himself who doesn’t believe that the new form of government will be any different than the one before, but let’s things be and lives his own life. The other two farmers, Mr. Frederick and Mr. Pilkington, represent Germany and Britain respectively. The relationship between Mr. Frederick and Napoleon ends in betrayal, and this represents when Nazi Germany invaded Russia with Operation Barbarossa in 1941. This invasion is depicted in the book in the Battle of the Windmill, which is built and then torn down with dynamite. Then the animals chase Mr. Frederick and his cronies off of the farm. This is a representation of the Battle of Stalingrad and the siege of Moscow in WWII. This is also a major battle and a turning point in the war. At this point, Napoleon has an iron fist on everyone and then the pigs start to walk on two legs and wear clothes; now they are indifferentiable from humans. Napoleon has turned into a human and his government has become no different than the other governments that came before and oppressed the people.

The premise of this book is that if you have control of the military, police, and the press you can basically do whatever you want. The unintelligence of the masses also contributes to keep to tyrant on the top. This is scary, and something that is still relevant today. Sometimes it is easier to believe the lies we are being fed than the facts, the reality that you don’t want to face. And people will deliberately blind themselves in order not to do that. That is why I think that this book is very prescient and speaks a lot about the politics going on today. 

I highly recommend it.

4. HISTORY AND WWI: The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went To War in 1914

How did WWI begin? This is the question that Christopher Clark sets out to answer in his book The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went To War in 1914. War wasn’t inevitable, but the actors that took part in the events leading up to the outbreak of World War I in August 1914 were active agents in those events.

In short, Clark sets out to lay out the facts that led to World War I. And those facts, according to this author, start with the Serbs. In The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman, as noted above, the author does not talk about Serbia and Austria-Hungary, if at all, but Clark dedicates two sections of his book to these two players in the politics of Europe of 1914. The first section, Serbian Ghosts, describes the political scene of Serbia in 1914 and it is a clear and pristine explanation of how the event of a Serbian national killing the heir of the Austro-Hungarian empire came to be. In the following section, Clark focuses on Austria-Hungary and tries to dispel major misconceptions about it; specifically that it was a moribund polity. This is far from the truth. And, contrary to what Tuchman thinks, Austria-Hungary is important in the backstory of WWI because one key event in 1908, in which Austria-Hungary was involved, sparked the Bosnian Crisis, contributed to growing tensions in the Balkans, and ultimately played a role in the outbreak of World War I. That event was the formal annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina to Austria-Hungary.

Serbia, for its part, saw the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina both as a challenge to its ambitions of becoming a Unified South Slavic state and as a threat to its national identity. The desire for a Unified South Slav State sparked The Balkan Wars in 1912-1913. In the First Balkan War,  four Balkan states, Greece, Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria, also known as the Balkan League, declared war on the Ottoman Empire, defeated it, and stripped it of most of its European provinces, except Eastern Thrace. In the Second Balkan War, Bulgaria, unhappy with the division of territory after the First Balkan War, attacked its former Balkan League allies, but was repelled by Serbia and Greece. As a result, she was also forced to cede a significant amount of territory to Serbia, which, now significantly bigger, expanded its influence too and this, in turn, heightened its rivalry with Austria-Hungary.

The First World War was the Third Balkan War before it became the First World War (Clark 2012: 242). How did this happen? Conflicts between the Ottoman Empire and Christian Europe were nothing new, but these conflicts in 1911-1914 soon created escalatory measures that enabled events within the Balkan Wars to engulf the entire continent in the span of five weeks in the summer of 1914. The first of these Balkan entanglements, however, as Clark calls them, was the Italo-Turkish War of 1911-1912, in which Italy was determined to conquer Libya, the last surviving North African state under Ottoman rule. And members of the Balkan League, seeing how easily Italy defeated the Ottomans and motivated by incipient nationalism, attacked the Ottoman Empire in 1912 and began the First Balkan War.

These Balkan entanglements culminate in the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Earlier, I mentioned that in school we’re taught that WWI broke out with the assassination of heir of Austria-Hungary. But Clark doesn’t begin his book with an account of this murder. Instead, he begins by telling us of another gruesome royal murder, one that we’ve probably never even heard about before, but that was also a prelude to the outbreak of WWI. This murder is that of King Alexandar and Queen Draga of Serbia in 1903. Clark, on the other hand, describes the assassination of the heir of Austria-Hungary in full detail 365 pages into his book, and this chapter, the first one of the third part of the book, is well-worth the wait. I highly recommend this book, but what is more, I recommend that you read it before The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman in order to understand the chronology of events better. Originally published in 2012, The Sleepwalkers has become one of the first books about WWI that connoisseurs and scholars recommend reading about the topic, and I agree. I highly recommend it.

5. DYSTOPIAN AND CLASSICS: 1984 by George Orwell

1984 by George Orwell is “horrifyingly relevant for the present day and possesses the rare ability, as great novels do, to transpose itself, to exist simultaneously at all times while existing independent of time itself (Weingarten, Iowa State Daily, September 2024).” Winston Smith, the protagonist of 1984, reminded me of two things: one, Winston Churchill, the world-famous prime minister of Britain during WWII, who fought against Nazi Germany and championed the cause of liberty and freedom, and two, Smith, the most common last name of the United States. So, Winston Smith represents all of us in a totalitarian society that gains power from the complete and utter destruction of the self; from manipulating, torturing, and brainwashing its citizen into believing and conforming to every wish and desire of the government. 1984 is the story of Winston Smith’s fight against that all-pervading government or Big Brother. If you think you’ve heard that name before, you have. The TV show Big Brother takes its name from this character in 1984.

How does Big Brother keep control over the masses? Through language, or more specifically, Newspeak, which only allows goodthink, or a way of thinking that constricts speech to such an extent that it is not possible to produce heretical thoughts. After all, if you do not have access to language, how can you defend yourself? To think a “wrong” thought is thoughtcrime. To survive, you must cancel that thought (crimestop) and convince yourself to believe something different and often contradictory (doublethink). The  goal of goodthink is to contort one’s mind to the extent that they trust Big Brother’s instinct over their own. It is about believing in Big Brother with every fiber of your being (Weingarten 2024). Totalitarianism is everywhere, but what is more disturbing is that the masses are not aware of what is going on and thus do not challenge it.

So, how is 1984 horrifyingly relevant today? Today we are endlessly distracted by entertainment (videogames and TV) and by our phones, scrolling on our screens to kill time, unaware of what is going on around us, that we are becoming more and more detached from reality. We are glued to our screens and don’t see beyond that. In addition, as Weingarten says, political engagement is increasing but political awareness is at its lowest. People protest and yell with genuine rage, but most of the time, they do so based on misinformation and lies being fed  to them from the “telescreens”. What is worse, though, is that they do not think it necessary to debunk that information. They earnestly believe, with every fiber of their being, what the propaganda or the modern goodthink says.  

This book is eerily prescient and that is scary. I highly recommend it.

6. SELF-PUBLISHED AND SHORT STORIES: 50 States: A collection of short short stories

I received copy of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review. A collection of short short stories is not a type of book that I pick up very often. If fact, I rarely do so. But this collection was a pleasant surprise. The common denominator of all of these short short stories is that all 50 of them take place in the United States. But each one takes place in a different state, all 50 states of the Nation, and in a different time. Some take place in the 1960s, others in the 2000s, but all of them are set in the United States. The characters are everyday Americans experiencing grief, loss of trust, innocence, and love. Missed opportunities and pain. I will talk more about my favorite stories in an upcoming review but suffice it to say that I recommend this short story collection to anyone who loves the genre and wants to support a self-published American author.

7. HISTORY AND WWI: The Zimmerman Telegram by Barbara W. Tuchman

It is 1917 and the war has been in a deadlock for three years. There is no end in sight. The only way to end it is for the United States to enter and help the Allies fight the Central Powers. But Woodrow Wilson is adamant in his stance of serving as mediator between the two sides and achieve a peace without victory. Negotiations are going nowhere, however, and the Allies are running out of money. Then the unthinkable happens: the British intercept a secret telegram from Berlin that could change everything.

Yes, this book has the potential to be a very good novel and Tuchman’s writing certainly does give it that effect. She is a master storyteller.

Published in 1958, I read this book as the final installment of Barbara W. Tuchman’s The Great War series. The other two books The Proud Tower and The Guns of August were published in 1965 and 1962, respectively. The Proud Tower is an account of the political state of affairs in Europe from 1870 to 1914; The Guns of August is the story, based on historical facts, of the first 30 days of World War I, and The Zimmermann Telegram tells how the United States declared war on Germany in 1917 after Germany’s threat of unrestricted submarine warfare and the interception of the Zimmermann Telegram. 

But let’s start at the beginning. What is the Zimmermann Telegram? The Zimmermann Telegram is the now infamous telegram that Germany sent to Mexico proposing an alliance between the two countries and Japan to attack the United States. In exchange, Germany would help Mexico regain the territory it lost to the United States during the Mexican-American War in 1848. This included the states the Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas. Now, in the decade of 1910,  Mexico was going through its own political upheaval and turmoil, and it wasn’t until I read this book that I realized that the Mexican Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and World War I were contemporary events.

In 1910, the Mexican Revolution broke out seeking to remove Porfirio Díaz from power. The Mexican President, de facto dictator, who, at this point, had occupied office for more than 30 years, was defeated in 1911 and exiled to Paris that same year. The new president, Francisco I. Madero, took office and served until he was deposed in 1913 in a coup d’état. But what I never learned in my history classes during high school in Mexico is that the Emperor of Germany, Wilheim II, supported Victoriano Huerta, the Mexican general who rose to power in the coup and  later killed Francisco I. Madero. In supporting Huerta, Wilheim II wanted to keep the United States distracted on this side of the Atlantic and prevent it from sending weapons to Europe and the Allies. Wilson, for his part, never recognized Victoriano Huerta’s government and supported Carranza in his vie for power. When the British intercepted the Zimmermann Telegram, they acknowledged that it had the potential to tip the scale in their favor and sent it to Wilson. Wilson, for his part, was distracted with the events happening in Mexico. Moreover, the Americans thought that the telegram was a fake. That is, until Zimmermann himself, confirmed its authenticity. And Wilson declared war on Germany.

This is shortest of Tuchman’s books in her The Great War series and the first one to be published. I, however, recommend you read it last. Read The Proud Tower first, then The Guns of August, and finally, The Zimmermann Telegram.  I will talk about this series more in depth in an upcoming post, but, for now, I will end this wrap up saying that Tuchman’s series is worth the read.  

That is everything I read this month. I will talk about more books in my next post.