Silent Night

August 13, 2001
Popular historian Weintraub (MacArthur's War, etc.), emeritus professor of arts and humanities at Penn State, tackles a sober subject from WWI, when amid the millions of casualties in the obscene carnage of trench war, a mutual agreement arose for a cease-fire at Christmastime of the first year of conflict. Drawing from secondary sources as well as much archival research in a variety of languages, Weintraub has compiled a brief, anecdotal account that reveals his skill as a researcher and deftness as a narrator in chapters like "An Outbreak of Peace," "Our Friends, the Enemy" and "How It Ended." There are lively anecdotes, contemporary doggerel and some extraneous asides—such as that "a Chinese fourth century B.C. military text mentions a primitive form of football." While succinctly conveying the mood and stakes of this unprecedented display of mutual trust during war, Weintraub's short book could help draw Malcolm Brown and Shirley Seaton's magisterial Christmas Truce
back into print. In the meantime, and just in time for the holidays, we have this offering from one of our most patient chroniclers.

September 1, 2001
At Christmas time in 1914, blood enemies emerged from their trenches in Flanders Field in Belgium, shook hands, and wished each other a merry Christmas. In his newest book, Weintraub (A Stillness Heard Round the World: The End of the Great War) draws on letters, diaries, and a variety of other source material to tell the inspiring story of the spontaneous Christmas Truce of World War I, when enemy troops laid down their arms, exchanged gifts, and reveled in their shared humanity. The desperate longing for peace, which Weintraub captures through the words of the soldiers themselves, underscores the poignancy of the ending of the truce, when outraged commanders ordered newly made friends to kill one another. Despite the impact of Weintraub's storytelling and documentation, some readers may be stymied by occasionally untranslated German or confused by his interweaving of fictional accounts of the event. Still, Weintraub's work stands as a unique testament to our fundamental brotherhood. Recommended for public and academic libraries. Michael F. Russo, Louisiana State Univ. Libs., Baton Rouge

Copyright 2001 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from September 1, 2001
There are moments in history in which the surreal and the real merge and become indistinguishable. On Christmas Eve of 1914, the meat grinder of the Great War had been chewing up lives for several months. Amid this seemingly uncontrolled savagery, a small miracle emerged: across the crater-scarred No Man's Land, the sounds of "Silent Night" floated, and soldiers on both sides spontaneously laid down their arms, exchanged gifts, and generally became human beings, rather than instruments of destruction. In this deeply moving account of the truce, Weintraub, professor emeritus of arts and humanities at Penn State University, illustrates how ordinary men followed the better angels of their instincts, reaching out to fellow soldiers despite clear instructions to keep fighting. The author utilizes numerous vignettes in which British and French soldiers experience touching encounters with Germans. At first, they move warily toward each other, and then their common humanity draws them closer. Of course, the poignancy of these moments is accentuated by our knowledge that the slaughter would willresume in a few hours. This is an emotionally stirring, uplifting, yet ultimately sad story brilliantly told by a gifted writer.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2001, American Library Association.)