The book is based on the diaries and memoirs of its participants. The author, researching the archives, restored the course of events of the First World War. Each of the nineteen completely different people on both sides of the conflict tells of a personal war, including: an American woman with many children who spent a summer on an estate in Poland; a Danish pacifist mobilized into the German army; Russian nurse; an Australian woman who came to Serbia in her truck to serve as a driver in the army; Russian officer; German sailor; adventurer, Latin American, abandoned by all armies except the Ottoman; French diplomat and others. Peter Englund shows how a person's mood and perception of war changes from admiration and enthusiasm to total fear and hatred & hellip; The author thus made diary entries that the events unfold consistently. We can see war month after month on all fronts at the same time.
