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you can tell he rushed the ending. one of his source books was a fantastic read though - A World Undone by GJ Meyer https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0553382403/ref=oh_aui_sear...

great timing, i was actually reading a wonderful book about wwi called “a world undone” by g j meyer, probably one of the best books about the war out there.

I've not read A World Undone (although after seeing the suggestions, I'm adding it to my to-read list). I did like Peter Hart's The Great War immensely, though, and recommend that as the best book on the actual campaigns of the war that I've read.

There's no reason that this couldn't work via an online community. Online courses don't do anything to foster this kind of connection, because they have always been a lazy facsimile of the in-person college course experience. If they tried, online courses could easily foster these kinds of relationships and unlock a ton of potential.

I also think that this is a larger societal problem that should be but has not been addressed by social networking apps. There are no social networks that are designed to foster communication about highly specific ideas. Sure I can go to r/history to find people who are generally interested in history, but where can I go to find people who would be interested in book-clubbing G.J. Meyer's 'A World Undone'? If I want to talk about physics in general, I could go to /r/physics. But how do I find physicists who want to discuss matter-antimatter asymmetry? You can glom on to conversations in current social networks, but there is no way to start/find/subscribe to discussions about very specific subject matter.

Point being, rather than saying that the IRL personal interactions at college are a reason why the current model is ideal, we could do a lot of good by figuring out how to port that experience A) onto online courses, and B) onto the world at large.

Blueprint for Armageddon is probably Carlin's weakest series. It tries to cram too much into too little time, and ends up almost incoherent unless you're already very familiar with the details from elsewhere. You walk away with the idea that fighting that war must have been pretty horrible, but not much else.

I've read a lot of WWI books, and _A World Undone_ by G.J. Meyer was easily the best. Would recommend that to start with for anyone who is interested in a history of WWI as a whole. (There are arguably better options for those just interested in the story of the slide into war, since that really needs a lot of space). The audiobook version is great too.