Germany in the Great War: Verdun & Somme
By Joshua Bilton, I think
Published by Pen & Sword Military 2021
Paperback ISBN 978 1 47387 689 7
209 pages plus chronology of events, bibliography, endnotes. No index.
Reviewed by Chris Baker
Review copy kindly provided by publisher.
My reading of this book began badly, when on opening to the first page I found that it gave a different name for the author to that given on the cover. So who wrote this, Joshua Bilton or Harold Cook?
It went downhill from there. I flicked to a random page, finding that this is a picture book but the first one I looked at was captioned “Arab locals use cylindrical rafts …” Blimey. Never heard of that on the Meuse or Somme. “…to carry their cargo of watermelons down the Tigris“. I thought perhaps Harold Cook had actually written a book about Mesopotamia and it’s just that the wrong cover of Joshua Bilton’s work on Verdun and the Somme has been stuck on by mistake.
So back to the contents page, where I found that of seven chapters, only one is about the Western Front and not even all of that is on Verdun or the Somme.
And then on to examine a few pages of photos, which I find carry no attribution or citation as to their source. I can only assume that the captions are the author’s work. Whichever author it is.
At that point, I gave up, so please forgive the brevity of this review.