"Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age". Some reviews of the 1989 book by Modris Eksteins

We believe we have to go beyond this Centenary mood to discover those that up to now remain the best books about World War One. This climate is indeed unfavourable to the conception of new studies able to go deeply inside a widely debated argument. It is not hard to understand the reason of this discomfortable situation, since the anniversary becomes often the excuse to spice or even to drug the premises and the expectations as well. For this reason, as far as our look goes, we can easily admit that no groundbreaking approach in the study of the First World War and no history book able to break with the tradition has been released in the last years (of course we hope something is going to happen). Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age is a book by Modris Eksteins first published in 1989 by Houghton Mifflin. Today, instead of offering a new review of this book we simply link the most interesting reviews one can find online.

Rites of Spring, Rites of Destruction

CHRISTOPHER LEHMANN-HAUPT

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/03/13/books/books-of-the-times-modernism-rites-of-spring-rites-of-destruction.html

Notes of reading Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring

PHILIP JENKINS

http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/j/p/jpj1/eksteins.htm

Review: Rites of Spring

ROBERT THOMPSON

http://www.thompsonwerk.com/2013/01/review-rites-of-spring/

Modernism & Its Consequences

JOHN P. SISK

http://www.firstthings.com/article/1990/03/002-modernism-its-consequences

Photos of animals in World War One: rats

So far we have considered the animals in World War One as friends or somehow close partners of soldiers. But we cannot but consider the other side of this story of animals crowding the trenches. And of course it is not actually a story of friendship and cooperation. It's quite easy to realize how many pictures of rats were taken during the war. In the trenches at night the rats could gnaw the soldiers' feet and of course they were responsible of many other annoyances and diseases, beside worsening an already poor hygiene. Here below is a selection of what you could find searching for pictures of rats in World War One. It's not infrequent to read about rats in diary or letters and from this we deduce they were an important presence in the soldier's life. All the below gathered images share a common sense of pride for the rich outcome of the hunt.

The poets and the world war: "Vanity" by Giuseppe Ungaretti

VANITY

Out of the blue
high
on the ruins
the clear
wonder
of immensity

The man
has bended
on the water
taken unaware
by the sun
and a shadow
revives
rocked
and slowly broken
into recessing trembling
reflections
of sky

Vallone, August 19, 1917

VANITÀ

D’improvviso

è alto

sulle macerie

il limpido

stupore

dell’immensità

L’uomo

s'è curvato

sull’acqua

sorpresa

dal sole

e si rinviene

un’ombra

cullata 

e piano franta

in riflessi insenati

tremanti 

di cielo

Vallone il 19 agosto 1917

* "La Riviera Ligure", ottobre-novembre 1917. The Italian version we publish is the one you can read in Giuseppe Ungaretti, Allegria di Naufragi, Vallecchi, Firenze 1919.