Book: Fall of Giants by Ken Follett

Book One of the Century Trilogy.

I took this along while on a train trip to Oregon and had long uninterrupted hours of reading the nearly 1000 pages. A perfect train book.

It's a historical panorama of Europe and Russia from 1911 to 1924, a novel of World War I, with engaging characters from Wales, England, Germany, Russia and the United States.

Along with the events leading up to war and battles in France and Germany, there are sociopolitical agendas of industrial safety, the vote for women and a burgeoning feminism; there is the inequality of class with wealth, opulence and entitlement versus lives spent in coal mines and factories; there is love and romance, stately manor houses, humble homes and grungy apartments.

The revolution in Russia: "The carnival atmosphere grew as they neared the center. Some people were already quite drunk, although it was only midday. Girls seems happy to kiss anyone with a red armband, and Grigori saw a soldier openly fondling the large breasts of a smiling middle-aged woman. Some girls had dressed in soldiers' uniforms, and swaggered along the streets in caps and oversize boots, evidently feeling liberated."

The battles: "Walter put on his gas mask, and gestured to his men to follow suit , so that they would not be afflicted by their own poison fumes when they reached the other side…There was an explosion to his right, and he heard a scream. A moment later, a gleam on the ground caught his eye, and he spotted a trip wire. He was in a previously undetected minefield. A wave of pure panic swept over him as he realized that he might blow himself up with the next step…."

After the war in Germany: "She left the club and went straight to the bakery. It was dangerous to hold on to money: by evening your wages might not buy a loaf. Several women were already waiting outside the shop in the cold. At half past five the baker opened the door and chalked up his prices on a board. Today a loaf of black bread was 127 billion marks."

"Over dinner everyone talked about what was happening in Bavaria. On Thursday an association of paramilitary groups called the Kampfbund had declared a national revolution in a beer hall in Munich….Everyone in Germany was angry about the Versailles Treaty, yet the Social Democratic government had accepted it in full…The Munich beer hall putsch had everyone worked up…." However, soon Walter tells Maud that "…the revolution in Munich is over…They've caught the leader. It's Adolf Hitler…He's been charged with high treason. He's in jail." His English wife Maud replies, "Good…Thank God that's over."

I learned and re-learned about this era in history which affected millions of people, and I am about to start Winter of the World, the second book in this trilogy.