Like Hidden Fire: The Plot to Bring Down the British Empire

Dark Invasion 1915: Germany's Secret War & the Hunt for the First Terrorist Cell in America

Howard Blum

The Zimmermann Telegram

Barbara W. Tuchman · 244 pages

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

Erik Larson · 464 pages

It is a story that many of us think we know but don't, and Erik Larson tells it thrillingly, switching between hunter and hunted while painting a larger portrait of America at the height of the Progressive Era. Full of glamour and suspense, Dead Wake brings to life a cast of evocative characters, from famed Boston bookseller Charles Lauriat to pioneering female architect Theodate Pope to President

The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5

Christopher M. Andrew · 1,032 pages

This book reveals the precise role of the Security Service in 20th-century British history, from its foundation by Captain Kell of the British Army in October 1909, through two world wars, up to and including its present roles in counter-espionage and counter-terrorism.

Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest

Wade Davis · 672 pages

If the quest for Mount Everest began as a grand imperial gesture, as redemption for an empire of explorers that had lost the race to the Poles, it ended as a mission of regeneration for a country and a people bled white by war.

Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia

Michael Korda

Churchill's Wizards: The British Genius For Deception 1914–1945

Nicholas Rankin · 480 pages

The War to End All Wars: World War I

Russell Freedman

The tangled relationships and alliances of many nations, the introduction of modern weaponry, and top-level military decisions that resulted in thousands upon thousands of casualties all contributed to the "great war," which people hoped and believed would be the only conflict of its kind. In this clear and authoritative account, the author shows the ways in which the seeds of a second world war w

Anzac Girls: The Extraordinary Story Of Our World War 1 Nurses

Peter Rees · 363 pages

By the end of the Great War, forty-five Australian and New Zealand nurses had died on overseas service and over two hundred had been decorated. These were the women who left for war looking for adventure and romance but were soon confronted with challenges for which their civilian lives could never have prepared them. Their strength and dignity were remarkable. Using diaries and letters, Peter Ree

World War 1: A History From Beginning to End

Henry Freeman · 50 pages

A Foreign Field

Ben Macintyre · 320 pages

In the first terrifying days of World War I, four British soldiers found themselves trapped behind enemy lines on the western front. They were forced to hide in the tiny French village of Villeret, whose inhabitants made the courageous decision to shelter the fugitives until they could pass as Picard peasants. The Englishman's Daughter is the never-before-told story of these extraordinary men, the

July 1914: Countdown to War

Sean McMeekin · 461 pages

When a Serbian-backed assassin gunned down Archduke Franz Ferdinand in late June 1914, the world seemed unmoved. Even Ferdinand's own uncle, Franz Josef I, was notably ambivalent about the death of the Hapsburg heir, saying simply, "It is God's will." Certainly, there was nothing to suggest that the episode would lead to conflict much less a world war of such massive and horrific proportions that

Dreadnought: Britain, Germany and the Coming of the Great War

Robert K. Massie · 1,007 pages

Describes the diplomatic minuets and military brinkmanship as Germany grew to be a continental superpower at the end of the nineteenth century and became a threat to Great Britain's naval superiority and isolationist policies.

The Beauty and the Sorrow: An Intimate History of the First World War

Peter Englund · 532 pages

Englund examines the history of World War I through the experiences of the average man and woman-- not only the tragedy and horror but also the absurdity and even, at times, the beauty. In a brilliant mosaic of perspectives that moves between the home front and the front lines, he reconstructs the feelings, impressions, experiences, and shifting spirits of twenty particular people, allowing them t

World War One: History In An Hour

Rupert Colley · 86 pages

Know your stuff: Read a concise history of World War One in just one hour. World War One brought with it the world's first experience of Total War, involving all of the world's great powers, polarized between the Triple Entente, lead by Britain, France and Russia, and the Central Powers, dominated by Germany and Austria-Hungary. Around 9 million men lost their lives in a conflict that introduced t

To Hell and Back: Europe 1914-1949

Ian Kershaw · 592 pages

"The Penguin History of Europe series reaches the twentieth century with ... Ian Kershaw's long-anticipated analysis of the pivotal years of World War I and World War II. The European catastrophe, the long continuous period from 1914 to 1949, was unprecedented in human history-- an extraordinarily dramatic, often traumatic, and endlessly fascinating period of upheaval and transformation. This new

Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game & the Race for Empire in Central Asia

Karl Ernest Meyer, Shareen Blair Brysac · 647 pages

"The world's oldest established imperial rivalry had its start during the Napoleonic age when British agents came upon the tracks of Russian rivals in snowbound Tibet, and then again in mythic Bokhara, deep in Central Asia. Was the Tsar planning to invade India, or even worse, was Russia bent on global dominion? To foil these real or imagined schemes, the British twice invaded Afghanistan, and in

The Great War: July 1, 1916: The First Day of the Battle of the Somme

Joe Sacco, Adam Hochschild

"A 24-foot-long black-and-white drawing printed on heavyweight accordian-fold paper and packaged in a deluxe hardcover slipcase. The set also includes a 16-page booklet featuring an essay about the first day of the Battle of the Somme by Adam Hochschild and original annotations to the drawing by Sacco himself."

A Storm in Flanders: The Ypres Salient, 1914-1918: Tragedy and Triumph on the Western Front

Winston Groom · 276 pages

"The Ypres Salient in Belgian Flanders was the most notorious and dreaded place in all of World War I - probably of any war in history. It was said that you could smell the battlefield miles before you reached it - a fetid odor of death. It was where the poppies grew in Flanders Fields while a million men lived like animals in slimy underground trenches and from 1914 to 1918 slaughtered one anothe

The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East

Eugene Rogan · 512 pages

Evaluates the impact of World War I on the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East as a whole, explaining the region's less-understood but essential contributions to the war and the establishment of present-day conflicts. In 1914 the Ottoman Empire was depleted of men and resources after years of war against Balkan nationalist and Italian forces. But as the powers of Europe slid inexorably toward war,

The Last of the Doughboys: The Forgotten Generation and Their Forgotten World War

Richard Rubin · 531 pages

In 2003, 85 years after the armistice, Rubin managed to find dozens of American veterans of World War I, aged 101 to 113, and interview them. All are gone now. They were the final survivors of the millions who made up the American Expeditionary Forces. Self-reliant, humble, and stoic, they kept their stories to themselves for a lifetime, then shared them at the last possible moment, so that they,

Truce: The Day the Soldiers Stopped Fighting

Jim Murphy · 116 pages

A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War: How J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Rediscovered Faith, Friendship, and Heroism in the Cataclysm of 1914-18

Joseph Loconte · 235 pages

"The untold story of how the First World War shaped the lives, faith, and writings of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis"--Amazon.com.

Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour: Armistice Day, 1918

Joseph E. Persico · 496 pages