General Knox was British Military Attaché with the Russian army in the Great War, before the country''s collapse into the chaos of the 1917 revolution. As such, he had a ringside seat on the scantily-recorded eastern front of the war. Knox witnessed such major events as the 1914 Battle of Tannenberg, in which Hindenburg and Ludendorff routed the Russian invasion of East Prussia, and the subsequent fighting in Poland around Warsaw and Cracow. The author was forced to flee Poland with the retreating Russians in 1915, and in 1916 saw the successful Russian offensive led by the brilliant General Brusilov. The book tells of the political discontent that preceded the revolution, and of the revolution itself in March 1917. This led to the abdication of the Tsar and brought the moderate Kerensky to power. Knox saw at first hand Kerensky''s vain efforts to keep Russia in the war. But the book ends with the dissolution of the army and the Bolshevik coup in Petrograd ( St Petersburg) which established Lenin''s Communist regime in November. The book, with 58 illustrations - mainly the author''s own photographs - and 19 maps, is a rare and valuable record of world-shaking events written by one who saw them unfold.
