The sheer bloody senselessness of World War I still sears the heart and boggles the mind a century later. The year 2014 will see the release of new works to mark the 100th anniversary of the war’s outbreak, but the lover of literature and history can do no better than to read or re-read Fussell’s Great War and Modern Memory. A decorated World War II combat vet and acclaimed cultural and literary historian, Fussell uses literature to measure the impact of war on a generation. In Fussell’s hands, poetry and fiction become more powerful explanatory tools than anything today’s clever manipulators of “big data” have come up with. Will the world’s great powers ever be so misguided as to fight each other again?