Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales: Treaties, Trenches, Mud, and Blood by Nathan Hale
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
World War I was hard to understand even for the people who were living through it. You sort of gloss over it in history classes because there is no clear-cut “bad guy” like in World War II. World War I was a mess, not only when it came to who was allied with who, but also because of all the new technology that was emerging so we had lots of different ways to kill each other.
Truthfully, everything I knew about World War I came from Blackadder Goes Forth and Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. As you can imagine, that was not a very complete view of the situation.
Nathan Hale has managed to condense it all down to 124 pages and it works! I came into this book only knowing WWI from watching Young Indiana Jones Chronicles as a kid and basic high school history lessons. Even though it feels like he is being goofy, assigning different animals to each country really helped keep the players clear.
In a recent podcast on Comics Alternative, Hale mentions that his primary goal was to write a fun story. He doesn’t want these books buried in the non-fiction collection, but on a shelf where readers interested in war and history might find them and learn something new.
This is a fantastic introduction to The Great War, for kids, teens, or adults. I know I learned so much. I recommend this book and ALL of Hale’s books.
orangerful 