These Are Our Masters is the first volume in an amateur history project that is totally insane, in the best way. Kersley is walking us through the war from start to finish, one day at a time, covering every theater and focusing on the experience of the soldiers in the trenches, and the absolute pointless misery of the war. It is comprehensive and totally unique in what it's doing, and gives a sense that this was truly a world war, fought not just over Flander's field, but along hundreds of miles of the Eastern front, in the Middle East, and in Africa. Kersley writes with a light touch, treating the horror of war very seriously, and looking for moments of levity. In this volume, the best parts are the early dairies of Louis Barthas, a French infantryman and grognard of the old school, and the indescribably insane small actions around the German cruiser Konigsberg in Africa. Kersley corrects a lot of popular misconceptions about the war, discussing the early optimism, the hard lessons learned in the initial battles about the lethality of machineguns and modern artillery, and why the powers kept fighting, without falling into a revisitionist trap that there was anything worthwhile there.

This volume does has some flaws. Kersley has little patience for the diplomatic maneuvering of the July crisis, which sadly has to lead off the book. He's still finding his feet as stylist (he's good, but gets better), and honestly, this is just better in bite-sized chunks as opposed to reading straight through. But you should still buy this book, because it's quite good, incredibly ambitious, and Karsley deserves a little compensation to make it through the rest of the war.

The First World War Day-by-Day has become an established part of my daily routine. Wake up, walk the dog, make some coffee, read how the world was getting messed up exactly 100 years ago. Sign up, stick around, and catch up we me as we close out 1915.