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

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,

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

Joseph E. Persico · 496 pages

The European War

· 694 pages

The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914

Christopher Clark · 736 pages

On the morning of June 28, 1914, when Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie Chotek, arrived at Sarajevo railway station, Europe was at peace. Thirty-seven days later, it was at war. The conflict that resulted would kill more than fifteen million people, destroy three empires, and permanently alter world history. The Sleepwalkers reveals in gripping detail how the crisis leading to World Wa

To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918

Adam Hochschild · 448 pages

World War I stands as one of history's most senseless spasms of carnage, defying rational explanation. In his riveting narrative, Hochschild brings it to life as never before while focusing on the long-ignored moral drama of the war's critics, alongside its generals and heroes.

World War One: A Short History

Norman Stone · 226 pages

World War One began on horseback, with generals employing bayonet charges to gain ground, and ended with attacks resembling the Nazi blitzkriegs. The scale of devastation was unlike anything the world had seen before: Fourteen million combatants died, a further twenty million were wounded, and four empires were destroyed. Even the victors' empires were fatally damaged. An overwhelming disaster fro

Treaties, Trenches, Mud, and Blood

Nathan Hale · 124 pages

"World War I set the tone for the 20th century and introduced a new type of warfare: global, mechanical, and brutal. Nathan Hale has gathered some of the most fascinating true-life tales from the war and given them his inimitable Hazardous Tales twist. Easy to understand, funny, informative, and lively, this series is the best way to be introduced to some of the most well-known battles (and little

Silent Night: The Remarkable Christmas Truce of 1914

Stanley Weintraub · 168 pages

When her husband was diagnosed with leukemia, Catherine Dornan and their two young sons accompanied him to New York, during the Christmas season, for a life-saving operation. Hoping to divert the boys from worry about their father, and to temper her own near despair, on Christmas Eve Catherine takes the boys to see Rockefeller Center's famous Christmas tree. When they stop to listen to a street mu

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

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

The First World War: A Complete History

Martin Gilbert · 688 pages

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.

A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918

G.J. Meyer · 704 pages

The First World War is one of history’s greatest tragedies. In this remarkable and intimate account, author G. J. Meyer draws on exhaustive research to bring to life the story of how the Great War reduced Europe’s mightiest empires to rubble, killed twenty million people, and cracked the foundations of the world we live in today. The First World War is one of history’s greatest tragedies. In th

Truce: The Day the Soldiers Stopped Fighting

Jim Murphy · 116 pages

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."

Gallipoli

Alan Moorehead · 384 pages

When Turkey unexpectedly sided with Germany in World War I, Winston Churchill, as Sea Lord for the British, conceived a plan: smash through the Dardanelles, reopen the Straits to Russia, and immobilize the Turks. On the night of March 18, 1915, this plan nearly succeeded -- the Turks were virtually beaten. But poor communication left the Allies in the dark, allowing the Turks to prevail and the Al

Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

Max Hastings · 628 pages

From the acclaimed military historian, a new history of the outbreak of World War I: the dramatic stretch from the breakdown of diplomacy to the battles -- the Marne, Ypres, Tannenberg -- that marked the frenzied first year before the war bogged down in the trenches. In Catastrophe 1914, Max Hastings gives us a conflict different from the familiar one of barbed wire, mud and futility. He traces th

The First World War

Hew Strachan · 364 pages

It will soon be close to a century since the outbreak of the First World War, yet as military historian Hew Strachan argues in this brilliant and authoritative one-volume history, the legacy of the "war to end all wars" is with us still. Written in crisp, compelling prose and enlivened with vivid photographs—including early color photographs—The First World War re-creates this world-altering confl

The Great War: 1914-1918

Peter Hart · 576 pages

Named one of the Ten Best Books of 2013 by The Economist ,World War I altered the landscape of the modern world in every conceivable arena. Millions died; empires collapsed; new ideologies and political movements arose; poison gas, warplanes, tanks, submarines, and other technologies appeared. -Total war- emerged as a grim, mature reality. In The Great War, Peter Hart provides a masterful combat

A Short History of World War I

James L. Stokesbury · 348 pages

World War I was a bloodletting so vast and unprecedented that for a generation it was known simply as the Great War. Casualty lists reached unimagined proportions as the same ground -- places like Ypres and the Somme -- was fought over again and again. Other major bloody battles remain vivid in memory to this day: Gallipoli and the Battle of Jutland are but two examples. Europe was at war with its

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

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

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