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World War One Is Severely Lacking Essay

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Kennedy’s Over Here is a perfect read for historians and those people that have more than basic knowledge about World War One. However, my education about World War One is severely lacking. Either the incompetence of my high school education or the incompetence of my memory in retaining the knowledge learned, lead to the reading of this book being very difficult for me. Kennedy assumes that the reader knows what certain terms mean, who specific people are, and that they are familiar with the events of the war. He went so quickly through a lot of background about the war in the prologue that it got a bit confusing. In fact, the author 's organization of ideas throughout the whole book made reading it more difficult. I feel like the organization of the thoughts or ideas presented left many main points unconnected, and thus understanding was lacking. It seemed that once I started to understand one factor he would then move on too quickly to another. For these reasons I struggled with following the ideas and timeline. Even though his style/organization did not improve, I did become more accustomed to it halfway through. At that point the book started to become more interesting and informative to me. I think I would have enjoyed this book more if I had read another book by him previously, and was used to his writing style/ organization. Most of the author’s secondary sources are not current; this is both an asset and a hindrance. The antiquity of his secondary sources meant he

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