We Were There: An Eyewitness History of the Twentieth Century [Hardcover]

`We Were There' is a collection of essays. They are edited and abbreviated, but that allows a huge collection of historical eyewitness accounts from both well known and those who are not known to history. The essays begin with the discovery of radium and end with demonstrations in Tehran in 2009. In between are stories recounting the sinking of the Titanic, the assassinations at Sarajevo, the Great Depression, the Blitz, D-Day, Beatlemania, the Moon Landing, Vietnam, a meeting with Osama bin Laden, 9/11. The scope is amazing as are the collection of authors; Ernest Hemingway, Neil Armstrong, Hunter S. Thompson, John Updike's witness to the collapse of the World Trade Center.

The essays are divided into sections with several essays in each section. The stories are short, but so gripping that, that taste leaves you frustrated for more. Backgrounds of historical/social significance are given for each section and a bit to tell you who and what each author is writing about. There is a very small section of pictures and an index and a source guide.

This is truly a fascinating account of the 20th century, told by those who were there. Not all are famous or are even reporters and writers, but that makes their accounts that much more fascinating for anyone wishing to learn what history is all about.

This book is a chronologically ordered collection of first-person accounts of historic events over the 20th century. The editor, Robert Fox, introduces each account with an explanation of the context and of who the writer was. Two-thirds or more of the selections deal with war-related history, disasters or massacres. The rest is eclectic but journalistic in nature and of course event-oriented. Robert Fox, explains: "Much of the choice is coloured by my life over the past 43 years or so as a journalist, traveller, and amateur historian." The book is a revised version of the original "Eyewitness to history" (Folio, 2008).

The book has 351 pages of numerous personal accounts. They are entertaining and would be informative mostly for those unfamiliar with 20th century wars. It also includes details that do not show in conventional histories. (For example, that people running from Vesuvius could not even be saved if they made it to the coast, because the water near the shore was so contaminated and deep.) It is strange to read snippet after snippet from different people writing in different ways about different things. It is history conveyed through anecdotes about individual experiences.

For me the most remarkable and touching story was from an Englishman, Eric Newby, who had escaped German imprisonment in Italy in 1943, and was on the run. Newby hat taken off his boots and was sleeping in an idyllic Italian field in the sun, to be woken by a tall, armed German officer simply looking down at him and greeting him in Italian and English. Newby's immediate terror dissipated slowly as he realised that the fellow was a gentle, cultivated person. He was an educated German who hated the war, was ashamed of being associated with the Nazis, and was forced into teaching Renaissance history to his brutal and uninterested fellow officers during their occupation of Italy. The German shared his two beers with the Englishman and spoke of the inevitable defeat of the Germans. He then excused himself and went on his way to catch butterflies in the field. Newby concludes, "I was sorry to see him go." One imagines that the good German had a butterfly's chance in hell of surviving.

The book does not attempt to reproduce the sources exactly. The editor warns from the start that the texts are not fully authentic. Selections have been "silently" cut, i.e., without ellipses. The styles have been "harmonised" to avoid undue "distraction". This is a matter of taste, but the book would have been better for me if it had been faithful and accurate . It was annoying to read in the introduction to Hemmingway's "first-person account" of the defeat at Caporetto that Hemmingway was not even present at the event!

The selections are all interesting, but they say little of trends, nor of the development of ideas, nor of how individuals experienced normal life in the 20th century. The accounts are mainly about Western events and almost exclusively from the Western perspective. For a somewhat wider horizon of eye-witness accounts spanning various events over recorded history and with less focus on wars, I recommend "The Mammoth Book of How it Happened" (editor Jon E. Lewis).

I was disappointed and surprised to find no mention of the Korean War. It lasted more than three years and killed tens, if not hundreds,of thousands. It was also a major armed conflict between the United States and its allies and the Communist Chinese.