War Primer

In this singular book written during World War II, the renowned playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht takes photographs from newspapers and popular magazines and puts short epigraph poems to each, in a unique attempt to understand the truth of war using mass media. From catastrophic bombings, to propaganda portraits of leading Nazis, to scenes of unbearable tragedy on the battlefield, this is an anthology of horror, but accompanied by Brecht’s razor-sharp deconstruction of what we see, through his taut, angry and direct poems. The result is an outstanding literary memorial to World War II, and also one of the most spontaneous, revealing and moving of Brecht’s works.