Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

My original thought was to give the book either four or five stars. The strong points of the text are in the tidbits of information given by Junger, e.g. artillery shells do not travel as far at night as during the day and there was little animus between French civilians and German soldiers. With regard to the latter Junger writes of sharing the home of a French family and playing cards after the evening meal and visiting of the stupidity of war. It left me angry with the idea of old and vain politicians causing wars over who knows what at the cost to regular everyday people. The book gives many pages of description of artillery attacks but after about fifty or so pages it becomes repetitive. It seems the main causes of death and injury came from artillery and sniper fire. The description of trenches was also enlightening. But in reading other reviews, after buying the book, I learned that many parts of the original had been edited out. Nuts! My purchase was to get a better idea not of grand strategic stuff but what ordinary soldiers did and what they thought. While the Hofmann translation is readable, sometimes downplaying events to show the foolishness of the whole war thing, I really would have liked to see the original which I think appears in the 1929 translation. I advise the dear reader to look for the latter. I'm always curious about what is taken out.