See - at times the pacing is what I quite like - I agree that there are other ways to get information across faster, but Carlin plays with the audio format to force you to dwell on certain things. It has some passages on the human cost / experience of war which are incredibly memorable imo. Of course no one source should be used in isolation and YMMV.

I'm with you. He does a great job of integrating sources, (with lots of quotes from the seminal works, in addition to memoirs and primary accounts) with a really cohesive arc to the story.

Nothing's ever made me feel the way the 2nd-3rd episodes of that show made me feel. There's something about the horrors of trench warfare being described in his way that really brings it home.

Horses for courses. You want scholarly work? There's a bunch of books for that. Want dramatization? Carlin does a good job.

> He takes a long time to say not much, all the while sounding quite profound.

Carlin is definitely verbose but personally I think that is part of the appeal! It's easy to skim through a historical account and only hear a series of dates and names. Dwelling on a subject helps with his narrative of reinforcing how horrible these conflicts were and allows Carlin to delve deeper into anecdotal accounts etc.

That was my problem with Carlin too. He just says everything in that profound, dramatic and at the same time empty (due to low density of information) style and it was driving me up the wall.

Related: "The Coming of the Third Reich", Richard Evans.

I've been reading this recently, it's a very measured look at German politics, culture, and economy from Bismarck through Hitler. Utterly fascinating

I'd recommend the whole trilogy of books by Evans (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Reich_Trilogy). The broad focus and often ground level perspective on German society is even more apparent in the second volume. I haven't encountered another source that better situates the experience of ordinary Germans in the political and cultural changes of the 1930s.

They are on the list next. Do you have any recommendations covering the Russian Revolution through WW2? I wanted to cover both before I start Hannah Arendt's work.

I have not read Keegan but Tuchman has aged quite a bit.

I would recommend "The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914" and "The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914".

"The Guns of August" is fantastic!