History 455 syllabus part I, basic info...

The Lochnagar crater on the Somme battlefield near Albert, France. A bomb the British exploded beneath the German lines was responsible for this monster. History 455—The Great War Fall 2012 WSUTC B. Farley Office 207J West Building, Faculty Row/372-7357/email brigitf2001@yahoo.com, bfarley@tricity.wsu.edu Contact info: Non-virtual office hours are basically just before or after class, and then 3:15-4 pm, Mondays and Wednesdays. Virtual office hours anytime, 24/7. You can email me any time and I try to get back to you as soon as possible, ideally at least by the next day. I don’t like the phone because it disturbs the two octogenarians I live with. Readings: At least a part of the term's readings will be taken from an online World War I document archive based at Brigham Young University and the University of Kansas. One of the longer ones, the diary of Ambassador Morgenthau, you will read in its entirety. Besides the online material, you will have Martin Gilbert's history of World War I, a terrific basic source with a lot of great anecdotes and telling detail. In addition, we have the Penguin Book of First World War Poetry. You know this was an awful ordeal if it is a poetry war. Poetry tries to say what cannot be said. Finally, Peter Englund’s magnificent The Beauty and the Sorrow, a unique work on this war or any other. We will try a little experiment this semester: you will make your own arrangements for getting these books. You have several options: library, Powells, Amazon if you want bricks-and-mortar books. And except for Gilbert, you can get them for Kindle or Ipad/Iphone(download the Kindle App from the app store) or your tablet of choice. This ought to cut down on the cost at least a little bit. For THIS FIRST WEEK: Martin Gilbert text, chapters 1-3, beginnings. Also, Peter Englund, 1914, pp. 5-72, 1914.