1917: Vladimir Lenin, Woodrow Wilson, and the Year that Created the Modern Age

I was given a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review by Harper Collins. 

Today's Nonfiction post is on 1917: Vladimir Lenin, Woodrow Wilson, and the Year that Created the Modern Age by Arthur Herman. It is 448 pages long and is published by Harper Collins. The cover has the eyes of the two leaders with the title below in red. The intended reader is someone interested in World War 1 history. There is some mild language, no sex, and talk of violence in this book. There Be Spoilers Ahead.

From the back of the book- In 1917, Arthur Herman examines one crucial year and the two figures at its center who would set the course of modern world history: Woodrow Wilson and Vladimir Lenin. Though they were men of very different backgrounds and experiences, Herman reveals how Wilson and Lenin were very much alike. Both rose to supreme power, one through a democratic election; the other through violent revolution. Both transformed their countries by the policies they implemented, and the crucial decisions they made. Woodrow Wilson, a champion of democracy, capitalism, and the international order, steered America's involvement in World War I. Lenin, a communist revolutionary and advocate for the proletariat, lead the Bolsheviks' overthrow of Russia's earlier democratic revolution that toppled the Czar, and the establishment of a totalitarian Soviet Union. Men of opposing ideals and actions, each was idolized by millions-and vilified and feared by millions more. Though they would never meet, these two world leaders came to see in the other the evils of the world each sought to eradicate. In so doing, both would unleash the forces that still dominate our world, and that continue to shape its future from nationalism and Communism to today's maps of the Middle East, Asia, and Eastern Europe. In this incisive, fast-paced history, Herman brilliantly explores the birth of a potent rivalry between two men who rewrote the rules of geopolitics-and the moment, one hundred years ago, when our contemporary world began.

Review- This is a very hard, dry read about a very interesting time in history. Herman does his research , which was excellent with notes about sources and other materials, but he forgot to make his book engaging. Reading this book was not easy. It was dry, it was overloaded with details that did not add to the overall narrative, and it was boring at times. Herman takes the reader from the begins of the First World War, briefly, then he get into the meat of his book which is how these two very different leaders shaped the war and the world after it. Herman gives so much information that I was lost at times about why one detail mattered so much in the sea of everything he deluged me with, sometimes I could not even tell which detail he wanted to make more important. In the end I was very disappointed with this book because it sounds so interesting but Herman loses the power of his reading of history in all the details of that history.

I give this book a Two out of Five stars.