What’s in it
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorAugust 1914
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn · 714 pages
Historical novel with an account of the Battle of Tennenberg in Prussia during the Great War, in which Imperial Russia was defeated after recklessly invading Prussia.
A Soldier of the Great War
Mark Helprin · 792 pages
A Roman student is torn from his carefree life when World War I breaks out, and fifty years later, recounts the triumphs and tragedies of his existence to an illiterate factory worker.
Fall of Giants
Ken Follett · 892 pages
It is 1911. The Coronation Day of King George V. The Williams, a Welsh coal-mining family, is linked by romance and enmity to the Fitzherberts, aristocratic coal-mine owners. Lady Maud Fitzherbert falls in love with Walter von Ulrich, a spy at the German Embassy in London. Their destiny is entangled with that of an ambitious young aide to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and to two orphaned Russian b
A Farewell to Arms
Ernest Hemingway · 332 pages
A Farewell to Arms is about a love affair between the expatriate American Henry and Catherine Barkley against the backdrop of the First World War, cynical soldiers, fighting and the displacement of populations. The publication of A Farewell to Arms cemented Hemingway's stature as a modern American writer, became his first best-seller, and is described by biographer Michael Reynolds as "the premier
Her Privates We
Frederic Manning · 288 pages
Originally published in a censored version, thanks to the realistic level of swearing in the soldiers' dialogue, 'Her Privates We' offers a unique insight into the life of a British infantryman in the trenches in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of the Somme. The author was an educated misfit who served alongside ordinary working class men; this gave him both the ability and the motivation to
Doctor Zhivago
Boris Pasternak · 542 pages
***This epic tale about the effects of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath on a bourgeois family was not published in the Soviet Union until 1987.*** One of the results of its publication in the West was Pasternak's complete rejection by Soviet authorities; when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958 he was compelled to decline it. ***The book quickly became an international be
Three Soldiers
John dos Passos · 433 pages
John Dos Passos had just returned from studying architecture in Spain when America entered World War I and - driven by the idealism that infected many young Americans (including Hemingway and e.e. cummings) - he joined up as a driver for the Ambulance Corps. His rapid and profound disillusionment forms the core of Three Soldiers, a fierce denunciation of the military and of the far-reaching social
Once An Eagle
Anton Myrer · 960 pages
**Required reading for West Point cadets, Once An Eagle is the story of one special man, a soldier named Sam Damon, and his adversary over a lifetime, fellow officer Courtney Massengale.** Damon is a professional who puts duty, honor, and the men he commands above self-interest. Massengale, however, brilliantly advances by making the right connections behind the lines and in Washington's corridors
Generals Die in Bed
Charles Yale Harrison · 249 pages
A young soldier with the Canadian forces questions the meaning of heroism, of truth, and of good and evil as he describes life in the trenches during World War I.
All Quiet on the Western Front
Erich Maria Remarque · 236 pages
This is the testament of Paul Bäumer, who enlists with his classmates in the German army of World War I. These young men become enthusiastic soldiers, but their world of duty, culture, and progress breaks into pieces under the first bombardment in the trenches. Through years of vivid horror, Paul holds fast to a single vow: to fight against the hatred that meaninglessly pits young men of the s
To the Last Man: A Novel of the First World War
Jeff Shaara · 672 pages
Jeff Shaara has enthralled readers with his New York Times bestselling novels set during the Civil War and the American Revolution. Now the acclaimed author turns to World War I, bringing to life the sweeping, emotional story of the war that devastated a generation and established America as a world power.Spring 1916: the horror of a stalemate on Europe's western front. France and Great Britain ar
War and Peace
Leo Tolstoy · 716 pages
War and Peace delineates in graphic detail events surrounding the French invasion of Russia, and the impact of the Napoleonic era on Tsarist society, as seen through the eyes of five Russian aristocratic families. The novel begins in the year 1805 during the reign of Tsar Alexander I and leads up to the 1812 French invasion of Russia by Napoleon. The era of Catherine the Great (1762–1796), when t
The Young Lions
Irwin Shaw · 677 pages
The Young Lions is a vivid and classic novel that portrays the experiences of ordinary soldiers fighting World War II. Told from the points of view of a perceptive young Nazi, a jaded American film producer, and a shy Jewish boy just married to the love of his life, Shaw conveys, as no other novelist has since, the scope, confusion, and complexity of war.
A Long Long Way
Sebastian Barry · 292 pages
It seems like a regular field trip to a natural history museum—until Zack gets locked inside for the night and discovers what really goes on in those display cases when no one is watching. A tribe of curious Neanderthals, rampaging woolly mammoths, prehistoric food shortages . . . it's just another wild adventure for Zack!
The Caine Mutiny
Herman Wouk · 536 pages
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize this atmospheric novel tells the story in flashback of a mutiny aboard a United States minesweeper during WW2. The murky events of the mutiny emerge during a court-martial and it soon becomes clear that few people will emerge from the trial with any credit.
The Wars
Timothy Findley · 221 pages
Robert Ross, a sensitive nineteen-year-old Canadian officer, went to war -- the War to End All Wars. He found himself in the nightmare world of trench warfare, of mud and smoke, of chlorine gas and rotting corpses. In this world gone mad, Robert Ross performed a last desperate act to declare his commitment to life in the midst of death.
An Ice-Cream War
William Boyd · 402 pages
American, German, and British lives in Eastern Africa were turned upside down by World War I. Settlers in Eastern Africa, once friendly neighbours, reluctantly became enemies. As millions were slaughtered on the Western Front, a ridiculous and little-reported campaign was being waged in East Africa - a war continued after the Armistice because no one told them to stop. This is a story of the men a
Birdsong
Sebastian Faulks · 483 pages
Set before and during the great war, Birdsong captures the drama of that era on both a national and a personal scale.Set before and during the great war, Birdsong captures the drama of that era on both a national and a personal scale. It is the story of Stephen, a young Englishman, who arrives in Amiens in 1910. His life goes through a series of traumatic experiences, from the clandestine love aff
How Many Miles To Babylon?
Jennifer Johnston · 156 pages
As a child Alec, heir to the big house and only son of a bitter marriage, formed a close friendship with Jerry, a village boy who shared his passion for horses. In 1914 both enlisted in the British Army - Alec goaded by his beautiful, cold mother to fight for King and Country, Jerry to learn his trade for the Irish Nationalist cause. But amid the mud of Flanders, their relationship is tested by an
A Fable
William Faulkner · 437 pages
An allegorical story of World War I set in the trenches in France and dealing ostensibly with a mutiny in a French regiment.

