The diary Dr Isaak Barasch kept while serving in the Austro-Hungarian army on the Italian front during the First World War gives the reader a remarkable insight into the conflict and into the man himself. Few personal accounts of service on the Italian front have been published in English and diaries from the Habsburg side are rarer still, so his writing is exceptional. He doesn't record military actions and manoeuvres in detail, but concentrates on his own reflections and feelings as he coped with the sick and wounded on the front line. He is often angry with the army and the war, but never expresses jingoistic hatred of the enemy. His indignation is directed at superiors, at commanders and politicians who know nothing of the terror of the fighting. When reproached for being too sensitive and insufficiently hardened, he noted that his biggest worry was how to remain untouched -how to retain his humanity. Eventually Barasch's sensitivity -and his resistance to authority -led to his being placed in a psychiatric hospital, and he died during the influenza pandemic of 1918\. But his unique account has been preserved and is now available in English for the first time. It is engrossing reading. It shows one man's honest, often emotional response to the experience of the war on the Italian front and offers a very rare inside view of life in the Austro-Hungarian army.

Oil is the source of wealth and economic opportunity. Oil is also the root source of global conflict, toxicity and economic disparity. When did oil become such a powerful commodity-during, and in the immediate aftermath of, the First World War. In his groundbreaking book The First World Oil War, Timothy C. Winegard argues that beginning with the First World War, oil became the preeminent commodity to safeguard national security and promote domestic prosperity. For the first time in history, territory was specifically conquered to possess oil fields and resources; vital cogs in the continuation of the industrialized warfare of the Twentieth Century. This original and pioneering study analyzes the evolution of oil as a catalyst for both war and diplomacy, and connects the events of the First World War to contemporary petroleum geo-politics and international aggression.