Description: A genuinely new insight into the lives of shell-shocked soldiers both during and after the Great War.
Brief description: Fiona Reid is Associate Head of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of South Wales, UK, where she teaches modern European History. She is the author of Broken Men: Shell Shock, Treatment and Recovery in Britain, 1914-1930 and a co-author (with Sharif Gemie and Laure Humbert) of Outcast Europe: Refugees and Relief Workers in an Era of Total War, 1936-1948 (2011).
Review Quotes:
"This is a deeply stimulating and, in many respects, arresting book. Based on original research, it breaks new ground in getting us to see how entangled are our ideas and beliefs about shell shock with the meanings we have ascribed to the First World War. If we are to reconsider shell shock, we shall also have to reconsider the First World War. This book will be an invaluable aid in that process." --Peter Barham, author of Forgotten Lunatics of the Great War.
"This book offers an important, and as yet under-researched, approach to understanding the history of shell-shock...overall the book is well written, brings to light important material that has been neglected in much of the writing on this topic, and argues convincingly for the importance of returning to primary sources to understand the conflicting versions of shell-shock and their social and political impact, during and in the immediate aftermath of the war. Very importantly, it brings new material and a new angle to this discussion." --Carol Acton, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. "It is Reid's judicious and non-sentimental analysis of the aftermath of war for shell-shocked men that makes this a book well worth reading." --History Today