The White War
Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919
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The White War
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Narrated by:
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Gerard Doyle
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By:
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Mark Thompson
About this listen
The Western Front dominates our memories of the First World War. Yet a million and half men died in northeast Italy in a war that need never have happened, when Italy declared war on the Habsburg Empire in May 1915. Led by General Luigi Cadorna, the most ruthless of all the Great War commanders, waves of Italian conscripts were sent charging up the limestone hills north of Trieste to be massacred by troops fighting to save their homelands.
This is a great, tragic military history of a war that gave birth to fascism. Mussolini fought in those trenches, but so did many of the greatest modernist writers in Italian, German, and English: Ungaretti, Gadda, Musil, Hemingway. It is through these accounts that Mark Thompson, with great skill and empathy, brings to life this forgotten conflict.
©2009 Mark Thompson (P)2009 Audible, Inc.Critic Reviews
"Thompson's book is beautifully written, and he skillfully interweaves vivid accounts of military progress with telling vignettes about the more extraordinary figures caught up in the fighting." ( Independent)
What listeners say about The White War
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 01-03-2024
A Hymn to The Italian Front.
This excellent and well-narrated history will be of great value to any student of The First World War wishing to expand their knowledge and awareness beyond the conflicts folkloric focus areas.
Overall, this humane narrative is compiled from a political and socio-cultural perspective.
The book covers effectively the painful progress, lost opportunities and harsh regimes of the Italian campaigns without creating a traditionally military-history style and technically-focussed narrative.
The book explores key individuals at the heights of command and equally plausibly at an operational level.
The examination of the political currents effecting Italy at the time and how they evolved is strong and informative.
The arguably signature virtue of Mark Thompson’s book is the constant intersectionality of the Italian arts and media that emerged from and intertwined with the history of this theatre of war and how this related to the political consciousness of the era.
His illustration of the emergence post-Armistice, through compromised leadership, of Italian Fascism as an ironic and avoidable tragedy is of particular scholarly merit.
Lucas Henry, Melbourne, 2024.
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- Tahana
- 29-07-2019
Made it three minutes in...
The narrator obviously didn't actually read the book and understand the emotion needed to portray the story.
I made it three minutes in before I couldn't go any further. This is why the authors really need to narrate their own books!
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