As the title of Meyer’s book suggests, a world order was swept away in a horror no one wanted. Like the Titanic two years earlier, the first world war was a tragedy we cannot forget because it marked a loss of innocence for the generation it consumed and for every one that came after. I remember sitting in old cafes and parks, thinking that everything must have looked the same to the young men in 1914 who would march into a maelstrom no could have imagined, least of all their leaders. Several told us there wasn’t a family in France that didn’t lose a father, or husband, or brother, or son. Because of my father’s work, we were living in France when I read the book, and older people at that time remembered the war. Meyer said something similar in his introduction). Mostly because the Great War has held a haunting fascination for me since I read All Quiet on the Western Front when I was sixteen (the author, G.J. The opening was so fascinating – history truly can be more fantastic than fiction – that I downloaded the ebook in order to read certain sections in detail.īut why choose such a tragic story for a road trip?įor several reasons. I usually favor action-adventure novels for travel, but this time I chose A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914-1918, by G.J. I spent last weekend in the bay area to attend some Tibetan teachings, and I’ll be making more trips in the weeks ahead, so I wanted to find something to listen to on the road. Audiobooks are great for travel, especially over repetitious routes. I’m a huge fan of audiobooks and have been since the days of cassettes.

A world undone by gj meyer