Salida Book Review

To the Last Man: A Novel of the First World War, by Jeffrey M. Shaara. ISBN 0345461347. Viewed from a distance, the campaigns on the Western Front from 1914-18 appear as a pitiless, mechanistic meat grinder, chewing up thousands of lives on a daily basis in a futile conflict without moral justification. So it is important to be reminded that the officers who launched these campaigns and the ordinary soldiers who fought in them were not mere automatons. Shaara, who has previously written celebrated historical novels about the Civil War and the Revolutionary War, again displays his gift for portraying the intensely human side of warriors. He focuses on the experiences of four historical figures, including the American General John "Black Jack" Pershing and the German air ace von Richtofen (the famed Red Baron). Although told primarily from an American perspective, the narrative gives appropriate attention to the attitudes and aspirations of both ordinary and prominent German military figures. When Shaara's characters are away from the front or not directly engaged in action, they indulge in soldier chatter, and the plot tends to drag. But Shaara is at his best in describing scenes of battle. He presents the horror of trench warfare in gory but necessary detail. When the action moves to aerial combat, Shaara offers images of strangely antiseptic beauty, as if airmen are somehow removed from the squalor beneath. This is first-rate storytelling that aptly describes aspects of a conflict that continues to shape our world today. -Jay Freeman. Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved.