The Trigger: Hunting the Assassin Who Brought the World to War

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.

Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey: The Lost Legacy of Highclere Castle

Fiona Carnarvon · 298 pages

Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey tells the story behind Highclere Castle, the real-life inspiration for the hit PBS show Downton Abbey, and the life of one of its most famous inhabitants, Lady Almina, the 5th Countess of Carnarvon and the basis of the fictional character Lady Cora Crawley. Drawing on a rich store of materials from the archives of Highclere Castle, including diaries, letters

The Secret Rooms: A True Gothic Mystery

Catherine Bailey · 400 pages

The Assassination of the Archduke: Sarajevo 1914 and the Romance that Changed the World

Greg King, Sue Woolmans · 383 pages

In the summer of 1914, three great empires dominated Europe: Germany, Russia, and Austria-Hungary. Four years later all had vanished in the chaos of World War I. One event precipitated the conflict, and at its heart was a tragic love story. When Austrian heir Archduke Franz Ferdinand married for love against the wishes of the emperor, he and his wife Sophie were humiliated and shunned, yet they re

King, Kaiser, Tsar: Three Royal Cousins Who Led The World To War

Catrine Clay · 432 pages

Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia

Michael Korda

Woodrow Wilson: A Biography

John Milton Cooper Jr. · 702 pages

The first major biography of America's twenty-eighth president in nearly two decades, from one of America's foremost Woodrow Wilson scholars.A Democrat who reclaimed the White House after sixteen years of Republican administrations, Wilson was a transformative president--he helped create the regulatory bodies and legislation that prefigured FDR's New Deal and would prove central to governance thro

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.

George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I

Miranda Carter · 498 pages

In the years before World War I, the great European powers were ruled by three first cousins: King George V, Kaiser Wilhelm II, and Tsar Nicholas II. Carter uses the cousins' correspondence and a host of historical sources to tell their tragicomic stories.

Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly, and the Making of the Modern Middle East

Scott Anderson · 577 pages

This book is a thrilling and revelatory narrative of one of the most epic and consequential episodes in twentieth-century history -- the Arab Revolt and the secret "great game" to control the Middle East. The Arab Revolt against the Turks in World War I was, in the words of T.E. Lawrence, "a sideshow of a sideshow." Amidst the slaughter in European trenches, the Western combatants paid scant atten

Nicholas and Alexandra

Robert K. Massie · 613 pages

"A LARGER THAN LIFE DRAMA, SO BIZARRE, SO HEART-RENDING AND, ABOVE ALL, SO APOCALYPTIC, THAT NO NOVELIST WOULD HAVE DARED INVENT IT" —Saturday Review Syndicate The story of the Tsar, his Empress, and the realm they lost. The story of a man, a woman, and the love they shared—and of the obscene monk, Rasputin, who corrupted and destroyed them. "A WONDERFULLY RICH TAPESTRY, the colors fresh and

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

Howard Blum

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

Peter Hopkirk · 439 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."

World War 1: A History From Beginning to End

Henry Freeman · 50 pages

Singled Out: How Two Million Women Survived Without Men After the First World War

Virginia Nicholson · 312 pages

In 1919 a generation of young women discovered that there were, quite simply, not enough men to go round, and the statistics confirmed it. After the 1921 Census, the press ran alarming stories of the 'Problem of the Surplus Women - Two Million who can never become Wives...'. This book is about those women, and about how they were forced, by a tragedy of historic proportions, to stop depending on m

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

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

Gallipoli

Les Carlyon · 752 pages

The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front 1915-1919

Mark Thompson · 454 pages

This is the story of the First World War in Italy, a war that gave birth to fascism. Mussolini fought in these trenches, as did most of his collaborators. But so did many of the greatest modernist writers in Italian and German - Ungaretti, Gadda, Musil.

The Guns of August

Barbara W. Tuchman · 575 pages

Published to immediate acclaim in 1962 and the winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1963, The Guns of August is the classic account of the cataclysmic outbreak of World War I in 1914 and the 30 days of battle that followed. This opening clash determined the future course of the war and shaped the history of our century. Its tense drama continues to enthrall readers of Barbara W. Tuchman's magnificent b

Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age

Modris Eksteins · 396 pages

In a remarkable display of originality and discerning historical analysis Rites Of Spring describes the origins, the impact, and the aftermath of the Great War of 1914-1918, arguably the most traumatic event of this century.

The Great Silence 1918-1920: Living in the Shadow of the Great War

Juliet Nicolson · 304 pages

The story of life after the Great War ended for a generation determined not be dominated by the past.