Musings & Thoughts for Wednesday, May 15, 2024, or: The Book that I’m Reading…and the One that I’m Writing

Late Morning, Wednesday, May 15, 2024, Madison, New Hampshire

Back to the TBR Stack – Sort Of….

It’s been a while since I last wrote about what I’m currently reading – you know, like the “TBR Stack” reports I used to write when I still lived in Florida. That’s partly because I haven’t been reading much beyond writing-related titles like Diana Gabaldon’s “I Give You My Body…” How I Write Sex Scenes or Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft to help me with my novel-writing endeavors, but mostly because many of the books I was reading in the Tampa Bay area are still in boxes that are much too heavy for me to bring in from the garage.

I am, of course, trying to get back into the habit of reading for pleasure instead of just for work, as well as to try to get by with the books that I have on hand rather than grouse about the ones I can’t read. So this week – yesterday – I began reading at least one of the books I bought in Florida a couple of years ago but only browsed through, thinking I’d get to it eventually.

The book in question is G. J. Meyer’s The World Remade: America in World War I, the second book in a duology that includes A World Undone: The Story of the Great War – 1914-1918. As the subtitle states, The World Remade focuses on the role played by the United States during the First World War, beginning with President Woodrow Wilson’s not-too-neutral neutrality policy that always favored the Entente led by Britain, France, and Russia despite Wilson’s claims to the contrary and ending with America’s entry into the war in 1917, its brief but important contribution to the Allied campaigns in the summer and autumn of 1918, and the somewhat bitter aftermath marked by Wilson’s abandonment of his famous “Fourteen Points” and his acquiescence to the much harsher terms imposed on Germany at Versailles by Britain, France, and Italy.

I only started The World Remade during yesterday’s midday rest break, so I am not ready to write a review, not even a cursory one. However, here’s the publisher’s dust jacket blurb:

A bracing, indispensable account of America’s epoch-defining involvement in the Great War, rich with fresh insights into the key issues, events, and personalities of the period.

After years of bitter debate, the United States declared war on Imperial Germany on April 6, 1917, plunging the country into the savage European conflict that would redraw the map of the continent—and the globe. The World Remade is an engrossing chronicle of America’s pivotal, still controversial intervention into World War I, encompassing the tumultuous politics and towering historical figures that defined the era and forged the future. When it declared war, the United States was the youngest of the major powers and militarily the weakest by far. On November 11, 1918, when the fighting stopped, it was not only the richest country on earth but the mightiest.

With the mercurial, autocratic President Woodrow Wilson as a primary focus, G. J. Meyer takes readers from the heated deliberations over U.S. involvement, through the provocations and manipulations that drew us into the fight, to the battlefield itself and the shattering aftermath of the struggle. America’s entry into the Great War helped make possible the defeat of Germany that had eluded Britain, France, Russia, and Italy in three and a half years of horrendous carnage. Victory, in turn, led to a peace treaty so ill-conceived, so vindictive, that the world was put on the road to an even bloodier confrontation a mere twenty years later.

On the home front, Meyer recounts the break-up of traditional class structures, the rise of the progressive and labor movements, the wave of anti-German hysteria, and the explosive expansion of both the economy and federal power, including shocking suspensions of constitutional protections that planted the seeds of today’s national security state. Here also are revealing portraits of Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, Robert La Follette, Eugene Debs, and John J. “Black Jack” Pershing, among others, as well as European leaders such as “Welsh Wizard” David Lloyd George of Britain, “Tiger” Georges Clemenceau of France, and Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany.

Meyer interweaves the many strands of his story into a gripping narrative that casts new light on one of the darkest, most forgotten corners of U.S. history. In the grand tradition of his earlier work A World Undone—which centered on the European perspective—The World Remade adds a new, uniquely American dimension to our understanding of the seminal conflict of the twentieth century.

As you might expect from a second book in a duology, Meyer’s The World Remade uses the same narrative technique seen in A World Undone. He follows the chronology of World War I linearly, alternating between “regular” chapters and Background ones in which he focuses on a single topic (such as how World War I began with the July 1914 crisis that followed the assassination of Austria-Hungary’s Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo) or important personages, such as Woodrow Wilson, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Alvin C. York, or Douglas MacArthur.

I haven’t read past the book’s second chapter, but The World Remade is just as well-written and fascinating as A World Undone.

On Writing & Storytelling: Action This Day

I have work to do today; I will continue with Reunion: Coda in some way after my usual break at noon. I don’t know if I’ll produce new content or end up, as I did yesterday, reviewing what I wrote last week and envisioning “what comes next” in the story.

This is where I stand as far as progress on the novel is concerned:

Chapters Completed: 16 (including the Prologue)

Pages (Paper Size: 6 in. X 9 in.): 377

Number of Words: 95,264

Well, that’s all the news I have for you, so I’ll close here. Until next time, stay safe, stay healthy, and I’ll catch you on the sunny side of things.