Soldiers Don't Go Mad
A Story of Brotherhood, Poetry, and Mental Illness During the First World War
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Narrated by:
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Edward Glass
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By:
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Charles Glass
About this listen
The #1 Amazon UK bestseller in War Poetry
A brilliant and poignant history of the friendship between two great war poets, Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, alongside a narrative investigation of the origins of PTSD and the literary response to World War I
From the moment war broke out across Europe in 1914, the world entered a new, unparalleled era of modern warfare. Soldiers faced relentless machine gun shelling, incredible artillery power, flame throwers, and gas attacks. Within the first four months of the war, the British Army recorded the nervous collapse of ten percent of its officers; the loss of such manpower to mental illness—not to mention death and physical wounds—left the army unable to fill its ranks. Second Lieutenant Wilfred Owen was twenty-four years old when he was admitted to the newly established Craiglockhart War Hospital for treatment of shell shock. A bourgeoning poet, trying to make sense of the terror he had witnessed, he read a collection of poems from a fellow officer, Siegfried Sassoon, and was impressed by his portrayal of the soldier’s plight. One month later, Sassoon himself arrived at Craiglockhart, having refused to return to the front after being wounded during battle.
Though Owen and Sassoon differed in age, class, education, and interests, both were outsiders—as soldiers unfit to fight, as gay men in a homophobic country, and as Britons unwilling to support a war likely to wipe out an entire generation of young men. But more than anything else, they shared a love of the English language, and its highest expression of poetry. As their friendship evolved over their months as patients at Craiglockhart, each encouraged the other in their work, in their personal reckonings with the morality of war, as well as in their treatment. Therapy provided Owen, Sassoon, and fellow patients with insights that allowed them express themselves better, and for the 28 months that Craiglockhart was in operation, it notably incubated the era’s most significant developments in both psychiatry and poetry.
Drawing on rich source materials, as well as Glass’s own deep understanding of trauma and war, Soldiers Don't Go Mad tells for the first time the story of the soldiers and doctors who struggled with the effects of industrial warfare on the human psyche. Writing beyond the battlefields, to the psychiatric couch of Craiglockhart but also the literary salons, halls of power, and country houses, Glass charts the experiences of Owen and Sassoon, and of their fellow soldier-poets, alongside the greater literary response to modern warfare. As he investigates the roots of what we now know as post-traumatic stress disorder, Glass brings historical bearing to how we must consider war’s ravaging effects on mental health, and the ways in which creative work helps us come to terms with even the darkest of times.
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Critic reviews
“Thoroughly researched and lucidly written, this is an immersive look at the healing power of art and a forceful indictment of the inhumanity of war.” —Publishers Weekly
“In Soldiers Don’t Go Mad, Charles Glass has created a remarkable chronicle of the timeless interplay between war's destructive but also creative forces. This is a story of friendship and of art, of war and of madness, and the way the former might save us from the latter.” —Elliot Ackerman, author of The Fifth Act: America’s End in Afghanistan
“Novels and films have been devoted to Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, but Charles Glass’s elegant non-fiction account has an indelible poetry of its own. Surprise and suspense, character and conviction, horror and heroism are seamlessly woven together in a fast-moving narrative. The contrasting settings—an idyllic retreat in Scotland for officers suffering from ‘shell shock’ versus the hell of trench warfare ‘where youth and laughter go’—will break your heart.” —Christopher Benfey, author of If: The Untold Story of Kipling’s American Years
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Performance
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A classic of its kind, The Long Gray Line is the 25-year saga of the West Point class of 1966. With a novelist's eye for detail, Rick Atkinson illuminates this powerful story through the lives of three classmates and the women they loved - from the boisterous cadet years, to the fires of Vietnam, to the hard peace and internal struggles that followed the war.
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His First Book-It Stands With All the Others
- By Richard Bretzing on 07-22-21
By: Rick Atkinson
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Saving My Enemy
- How Two WWII Soldiers Fought Against Each Other and Later Forged a Friendship that Saved Their Lives
- By: Bob Welch
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Saving My Enemy is the touching true story of two soldiers on opposite sides of WWII whose unlikely friendship, forged in their 80s, dissolves six decades of guilt and shame that had pushed both men to despair.
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Our story!
- By Marianne McNally on 04-27-21
By: Bob Welch
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Patton
- Blood, Guts, and Prayer
- By: Michael Keane
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 6 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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No one in the history of warfare was less likely to follow that advice than George S. Patton, Jr. His place was in front of his men, and he paid the price, when he lay bleeding to death in a bomb crater in France. Patton’s survival that day at the end of World War I was nothing short of miraculous. It confirmed the powerful sense of destiny that guided him through three decades of war and made him a military legend. Patton has been venerated and despised but rarely understood. In Patton: Blood, Guts, and Prayer, Michael Keane penetrates the fog of legend and reveals as compelling a human character as any in American history.
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A different view of Patton
- By Jean on 06-19-13
By: Michael Keane
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"Promise Me You'll Shoot Yourself"
- The Mass Suicide of Ordinary Germans in 1945
- By: Florian Huber
- Narrated by: Sam Peter Jackson
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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By the end of April 1945 in Germany, the Third Reich had fallen and invasion was underway. As the Red Army advanced, horrifying stories spread about the depravity of its soldiers. For many German people, there seemed to be nothing left but disgrace and despair. For tens of thousands of them, the only option was to choose death - for themselves and for their children.
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This book should be required reading for anyone that seeks to understand how ordinary people could be transformed into monsters.
- By Anonymous User on 05-08-20
By: Florian Huber
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Biggest Brother
- The Life of Major Dick Winters, the Man Who Led the Band of Brothers
- By: Larry Alexander
- Narrated by: Traber Burns
- Length: 13 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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They were Easy Company, 101st Army Airborne - the World War II fighting unit legendary for their bravery against nearly insurmountable odds and their loyalty to one another in the face of death. Every soldier in this band of brothers looked to one man for leadership, devotion to duty, and the embodiment of courage: Major Dick Winters. This is the riveting story of an ordinary man who became an extraordinary hero.
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Excellent!
- By Vera Family on 09-24-21
By: Larry Alexander
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Tolkien and the Great War
- The Threshold of Middle-earth
- By: John Garth
- Narrated by: John Garth
- Length: 11 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Tolkien and the Great War tells for the first time the full story of how he embarked on the creation of Middle-earth in his youth as the world around him was plunged into catastrophe. This biography reveals the horror and heroism that he experienced as a signals officer in the Battle of the Somme and introduces the circle of friends who spurred his mythology to life.
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Excellent Text Frustratingly Recorded
- By Timothy Ortopan on 05-09-18
By: John Garth
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Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour
- Armistice Day, 1918 World War I and Its Violent Climax
- By: Joseph E. Persico
- Narrated by: Jonathan Marosz
- Length: 17 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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The best-selling author of Roosevelt's Secret War traces the last day of World War I, weaving together the experiences of the famous, such as President Wilson, General Pershing, and Douglas MacArthur, and the unsung and unremembered.
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Beauty amidst savagery
- By Amazon Customer on 12-06-04
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My Fellow Soldiers
- General John Pershing and the Americans Who Helped Win the Great War
- By: Andrew Carroll
- Narrated by: Andrew Carroll
- Length: 11 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Andrew Carroll's intimate portrait of General Pershing, who led all of the American troops in Europe during World War I, is a revelation. Given a military force that on the eve of its entry into the war was downright primitive compared to the European combatants, the general surmounted enormous obstacles to build an army and ultimately command millions of US soldiers. But Pershing himself - often perceived as a harsh, humorless, and wooden leader - concealed inner agony from those around him.
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Don’t pass this up
- By PineappleSmoothy on 03-29-18
By: Andrew Carroll
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The Crowded Hour
- Theodore Roosevelt, the Rough Riders, and the Dawn of the American Century
- By: Clay Risen
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 12 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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The “gripping” (The Washington Post) story of the most famous regiment in American history: the Rough Riders, a motley group of soldiers led by Theodore Roosevelt, whose daring exploits marked the beginning of American imperialism in the 20th century. Both a portrait of these men, few of whom were traditional soldiers, and of the Spanish-American War itself, The Crowded Hour dives deep into the daily lives and struggles of Roosevelt and his regiment. Using diaries, letters, and memoirs, Risen illuminates an influential moment in American history.
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Dissapointed
- By Bill on 09-13-19
By: Clay Risen
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Ivan's War
- Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945
- By: Catherine Merridale
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 16 hrs
- Unabridged
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Of the 30 million who fought in the eastern front of World War II, 8 million died, driven forward in suicidal charges, shattered by German shells and tanks. They were the men and women of the Red Army, a ragtag mass of soldiers who confronted Europe's most lethal fighting force and by 1945 had defeated it. Sixty years have passed since their epic triumph, but the heart and mind of Ivan - as the ordinary Russian soldier was called-remain a mystery. We know something about how the soldiers died, but nearly nothing about how they lived, how they saw the world, or why they fought.
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Bird's eye view of the Eastern Front in WW2.
- By Mike From Mesa on 01-16-20
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War Letters
- Extraordinary Correspondence from American Wars
- By: Andrew Carroll
- Narrated by: Joan Allen, Tom Brokaw
- Length: 6 hrs and 9 mins
- Abridged
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War Letters presents historic, dramatic, personal accounts of both World Wars, the Civil War, Vietnam, Korea, the Cold War, Somalia and the Balkans, revealing in vivid detail what the servicemen and women of America have experienced and sacrificed on the front lines. Read by an all-star cast, including Joan Allen, Tom Brokaw, Rob Lowe, Noah Wyle, and more.
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One of the best...
- By Chris on 01-14-03
By: Andrew Carroll
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To End All Wars
- A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918
- By: Adam Hochschild
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 16 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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World War I stands as one of history's most senseless spasms of carnage, defying rational explanation. In a riveting, suspenseful narrative with haunting echoes for our own time, Adam Hochschild brings it to life as never before. He focuses on the long-ignored moral drama of the war's critics, alongside its generals and heroes. Thrown in jail for their opposition to the war were Britain's leading investigative journalist, a future winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, and an editor who, behind bars, published a newspaper for his fellow inmates on toilet paper.
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A story of personalities
- By Tad Davis on 06-09-11
By: Adam Hochschild
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“Too Much for Human Endurance”
- The George Spangler Farm Hospitals and the Battle of Gettysburg
- By: Ronald D. Kirkwood
- Narrated by: Bob Neufeld
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Sound interesting? The author thinks so too! Listen to “Too Much for Human Endurance” and learn about the George Spangler farm hospitals and the Battle of Gettysburg.
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Readable and Entertaining
- By My Mother's Daughter on 04-06-21
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Breaker Morant
- By: Peter FitzSimons
- Narrated by: Cameron Goodall
- Length: 23 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Most Australians have heard of the Boer War of 1899 to 1902 and of Harry 'Breaker' Morant, a figure who rivals Ned Kelly as an archetypal Australian folk hero. Born in England and emigrating to Queensland in 1883 in his early 20s, Morant was a charming but reckless man who established a reputation as a rider, polo player and writer. He submitted ballads to The Bulletin that were published under the name 'The Breaker' and counted Banjo Paterson as a friend.
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Horrors of war
- By David R. on 04-15-21
By: Peter FitzSimons
What listeners say about Soldiers Don't Go Mad
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Josiah Olsson
- 02-15-24
Healing from Hell
This work gives great insight into WWI shell shock and the Scottish place of healing and many UK troops visited as they worked through their trauma. I learned more about Sassoon, Graves, Owen, and their doctors who walked this journey together during the Great War. It was well written, narrated, and a good blend of battle accounts and rehabilitation narratives. Very good book for WWI buffs 👍🏻
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- Steve M
- 06-30-23
Excellent read!
This book gives an excellent account of the soldiers of the Great War and their struggles with the horrific consequences of modern warfare on the human mind.
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- Barbara Carroll Robinson
- 07-11-23
Extraordinary story telling
This is an insightful & compassionate recounting of the emotional horrors of war. It captures the struggle for meaning in a world turned upside down. I look forward to more writing by Charles Glass & narration by Edward Glass.
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- Annie M
- 08-21-23
Poignant and touching
This sensitive retelling of the lives of these men was amazingly researched and was so engaging that I found it hard “to put it down”
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