
The White War
Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919
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Narrated by:
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Gerard Doyle
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By:
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Mark Thompson
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.Listeners also enjoyed...




















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)
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My only quibble with the book is the obvious lack of maps, but that is easily remedied by resorting to Google maps.
The Other Front...
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I've been obsessed with World War 1 from childhood, and also have a passion for Italian history. The focus of this book perhaps makes it a specialist's subject, although it certainly deserves a wider general readership. If you are not interested in the minutiae of Italian life, both at home and on the front, you might prefer to look elsewhere. But if you're like me and you devour such detail with relish, you might just love this book as much as I do. The characters, both honorable and reprehensible, and the experiences, will stay with me forever.
Apparently the narrator is an all or nothing proposition. I didn't mind him at all because he reminded me of another narrator I enjoy, Paul Panting. Furthermore, he didn't slaughter the Italian language. There are all too many narrators on audible who cannot pronounce their native English properly, far less another language, so for Gerard Doyle and others like him, I am truly grateful.
An indispensable contribution
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Good Overview of the war
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I say "what should be a gripping listen" because of the narrator's style. Doyle's reading is monotonous and rather than being immersive is distracting. His Italian pronunciation is more or less fine (for example, he knows that "gl" in italian names does not sound like "gl" in "glass"), but every sentence is spoken with an identical cadence that sounds like a cross between a question and statement of surprise, without pauses to allow the listener to detect the end of a paragraph.
This is a tragic, fascinating, and under-appreciated part of the story of the Great War, and Thompson deserves kudos for telling it. It just should have been read by someone else.
Fascinating history that deserves better narration
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Great story - Ok narration
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Hard book for listening
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A comprehensive volume on the Italian Front.
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Great historical record of this war.
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Excellent read
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Story of italian incompetence, pride and Its price
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