Sign-In
Cart
Muse of Fire: World War I as Seen Through the Lives of the Soldier Poets
Hardcover
MusiciansPoetry CriticismWorld War I
Publisher Price: $29.99
ISBN13: 9781631496882
Publisher: Liveright Publishing Corporation
Published: Apr 16 2024
Pages: 400
Weight: 1.51
Height: 1.29 Width: 6.17 Depth: 9.26
Language: English
Michael Korda, the best-selling author of Hero and Alone, tells the story of the First World War not in any conventional way but through the intertwined lives of the soldier poets who came to describe it best, and indeed to symbolize the war's tragic arc and lethal fury.
His epic narrative begins with Rupert Brooke, the handsomest young man in England and perhaps its most famous young poet in the halcyon days of the Edwardian Age, and ends five years later with Wilfred Owen, killed in action at twenty-five, only one week before the armistice. With bitter irony, Owen's mother received the telegram informing her of his death on November 11, just as church bells tolled to celebrate the war's end.
Korda's dramatic account, which includes anecdotes from his own family history, not only brings to life the soldier poets but paints an unforgettable picture of life and death in the trenches, and the sacrifice of an entire generation. His cast of characters includes the young American poet Alan Seeger, who was killed in action as a private in the French Foreign Legion; Isaac Rosenberg, whose parents had fled czarist anti-Semitic persecution and who was killed in action at the age of twenty-eight before his fame as a poet and a painter was recognized; Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon, whose friendship and friendly rivalry endured through long, complicated private lives; and, finally, Owen, whose fame came only posthumously and whose poetry remains some of the most savage and heartbreaking to emerge from the cataclysmic war.
As Korda demonstrates, the poets of the First World War were soldiers, heroes, martyrs, victims, their lives and loves endlessly fascinating--that of Rupert Brooke alone reads like a novel, with his journey to Polynesia in pursuit of a life like Gauguin's and some of his finest poetry written only a year before his tragic death. Muse of Fire is at once a portrait of their lives and a narrative of a civilization destroying itself, among the rubble, shadows, and the unresolved problems of which we still live, from the revival of brutal trench warfare in Ukraine and in the Middle East.
Also in
World War I
The Lost Empire of Emanuel Nobel: Romanovs, Revolutionaries, and the Forgotten Titan Who Fueled the World
Brunt, Douglas
Hardcover
The Guns of August: The Outbreak of World War I; Barbara W. Tuchman's Great War Series
Tuchman, Barbara W.
Paperback
The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel: Genius, Power, and Deception on the Eve of World War I
Brunt, Douglas
Paperback
The Guns of August: The Pulitzer Prize-Winning Classic about the Outbreak of World War I
Tuchman, Barbara W.
Paperback
The War That Made the Middle East: World War I and the End of the Ottoman Empire
Aksakal, Mustafa
Hardcover
American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis
Hochschild, Adam
Paperback
My Struggle: English Translation of Mein Kamphf - Mein Kampt - Mein Kampf
Hitler, Adolf
Murphy, James
Mein Kampf, Kamphf English Kampt
Paperback
Two World Wars and Hitler: Who Was Responsible?: Anglo-American Money, Foreign Agents and Geopolitics
MacGregor, Jim
O'Dowd, John
Paperback
The Great Halifax Explosion: A World War I Story of Treachery, Tragedy, and Extraordinary Heroism
Bacon, John U.
Paperback
The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel: Genius, Power, and Deception on the Eve of World War I
Brunt, Douglas
Hardcover
Ring of Fire: A New History of the World at War: 1914
Churchill, Alexandra
Eberholst, Nicolai
Hardcover
The Killing Season: The Autumn of 1914, Ypres, and the Afternoon That Cost Germany a War
Cowley, Robert
Hardcover
The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914; Barbara W. Tuchman's Great War Series
Tuchman, Barbara W.
Paperback
Those Who Know The Sky: Hobey Baker, The Dawn of Aviation, and The War to End All Wars
Margiotti, Thomas F.
Hardcover
Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East
Anderson, Scott
Paperback
The Beauty and the Sorrow: An Intimate History of the First World War
Englund, Peter
Graves, Peter
Paperback
The Facemaker: A Visionary Surgeon's Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I
Fitzharris, Lindsey
Paperback
The Escape Artists: A Band of Daredevil Pilots and the Greatest Prison Break of the Great War
Bascomb, Neal
Paperback
The Myth of the Great War: A New Military History of World War I
Literary Group International
Mosier, John
Paperback
The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931
Tooze, Adam
Paperback
Black Soldiers, White Laws: The Tragedy of the 24th Infantry in 1917 Houston
Haymond, John A.
Hardcover
The Africa Ship: Ludwig Bockholt, Zeppelin L 59, and the Most Daring Rescue Mission of Wwi
Etzold, Dominic
Hardcover
The Other Trench: The WW1 Diary and Photos of a German Officer
Pfeifer, Alexander
Cross, Philipp
Paperback
The White Lady: The Story of Two Key British Secret Service Networks Behind German Lines
Fry, Helen
Hardcover
Verdun: The Lost History of the Most Important Battle of World War I, 1914-1918
Mosier, John
Paperback
Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914-1918
Barthas, Louis
Paperback
The Last Tsar: The Abdication of Nicholas II and the Fall of the Romanovs
Hasegawa, Tsuyoshi
Hardcover
The Last Ships from Hamburg: Business, Rivalry, and the Race to Save Russia's Jews on the Eve of World War I
Ujifusa, Steven
Paperback
The Last Cavalryman: The Life of General Lucian K. Truscott, Jr. Volume 48
Ferguson, Harvey
Hardcover
The Zimmermann Telegram: America Enters the War, 1917-1918; Barbara W. Tuchman's Great War Series
Tuchman, Barbara W.
Paperback
Anglo-French Military Planning, 1905-1914.: Before the First World War: A Study in 'Military Diplomacy'
Krause, Michael D.
Paperback
Walking Since Daybreak: A Story of Eastern Europe, World War II, and the Heart of Our Century
Eksteins, Modris
Paperback
The Great War and the Transformation of Habsburg Central Europe
Zahra, Tara
Judson, Pieter M.
Hardcover
Tatiana Romanov, Daughter of the Last Tsar: Diaries and Letters, 1913-1918
Nicholson, Nicholas B. a.
Azar, Helen
Hardcover
The Other Trench: The WW1 Diary and Photos of a German Officer
Pfeifer, Alexander
Cross, Philipp
Hardcover
Italian Adriatic Fleet 1915-18: The Fierce Naval War with Austria-Hungary
Cernuschi, Enrico
Paperback
Fighting Proud: The Untold Story of the Gay Men Who Served in Two World Wars
Bourne, Stephen
Paperback
World War I for Kids: Amazing Facts, Key Players, Heroic Acts, Major Battles, and How the War Changed the World
Burrows, James
Paperback
Worlds of Wartime: The First World War and the Reconstruction of Modern Politics
Kelly, Duncan
Hardcover
The Football Battalions: The Elite Footballers Who Fought in the Great War
Evans, Christopher
Hardcover
Orchestrating Power: The American Associational State in the First World War
Finney, Nathan K.
Hardcover
Prolonging the Agony: How the Anglo-American Establishment Deliberately Extended WWI by Three-And-A-Half Years.
Docherty, Gerry
MacGregor, Jim
Paperback
The Marne, 1914: The Opening of World War I and the Battle That Changed the World
Herwig, Holger H.
Paperback
The Unknowns: The Untold Story of America's Unknown Soldier and Wwi's Most Decorated Heroes Who Brought Him Home
O'Donnell, Patrick K.
Hardcover
My Reminiscences of East Africa: The German East Africa Campaign in World War One - A General's Memoir
Lettow-Vorbeck, General Paul Emil Von
Paperback
500 World War I & II Facts - Interesting Events & History Information To Win Trivia
Matthews, Scott
Paperback
The Blitzkrieg Myth: How Hitler and the Allies Misread the Strategic Realities of World War II
Mosier, John
Paperback
Democracy's Foot Soldiers: World War I and the Politics of Empire in the Greater Caribbean
Goldthree, Reena N.
Hardcover
Fighting the Flying Circus: The Greatest True Air Adventure to Come Out of World War I
Rickenbacker, Eddie V.
Paperback
The Unknowns: The Untold Story of America's Unknown Soldier and Wwi's Most Decorated Heroes Who Brought Him Home
O'Donnell, Patrick K.
Paperback
The Storm of Steel: From the Diary of a German Storm-Troop Officer on the Western Front
Jünger, Ernst
Hardcover
The Story of the American Legion: The History and Founding of the U.S. Veterans Organization in the Aftermath of World War One
Wheat, George Seay
Paperback
The Aviator: A Biography of James R. McConnell, Lafayette Escadrille Fighter Pilot
Tom, Steven T.
Hardcover
A Footnote to Freedom: Reclaiming the Life and Legacy of a Black Battalion Soldier
Dixon, Lance B.
Paperback
The First World War in the Baltic Sea Volume 1: Essen's Triumph, 1914 to February 1915
Harris, Mark
Hardcover
World War I for Teens: An Enthralling Guide to the Conflict that Redefined Nations
Wellman, Billy
Hardcover
Burning Beethoven: The Eradication of German Culture in The United States During World War I
Kirschbaum, Erik
Paperback
Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany, and the Winning of the Great War at Sea
Massie, Robert K.
Paperback
Life and Death on the Western Front: Marine Private Charles Jefferson Rhea's World War I Memoir
Presley, James
Paperback
Citizen of the Shadows: The Lives and Lies of Lothar Witzke
Hornick, Robert N.
Friedland, Paul
Paperback
Guardians of the Pass: America's Rainbow Division Against the Final German Offensive of World War I
Thompson, Robert
Hardcover
Victory at Sea: The Story of Admiral Chester W. Nimitz: The Admiral Who Defeated Japan
Mitchell, Gary
Paperback
George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I
Carter, Miranda
Paperback
Delta Force: A Memoir by the Founder of the U.S. Military's Most Secretive Special-Operations Unit
Beckwith, Charlie A.
Knox, Donald
Paperback
The Greatest Spy: The True Story of Churchill's Secret Agent Who Became the Model for James Bond, 007
Harte, John
Paperback
History of Naval Warfare: A Captivating Guide to the Strategies, Battles, and Innovations That Have Shaped Maritime History
History, Captivating
Hardcover
Manipulating the Masses: Woodrow Wilson and the Birth of American Propaganda
Hamilton, John Maxwell
Paperback
War and Remembrance: The Story of the American Battle Monuments Commission
Conner, Thomas H.
Hardcover