The Last Fighting Tommy: The Life of Harry Patch, the Oldest Surviving Veteran of the Trenches

Somme Mud

Edward P.F. Lynch · 407 pages

Private Lynch wrote 'Somme Mud' in pencil in twenty school exercise books. It vividly captures the horror and magnitude of the First World 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.

A Soldier on the Southern Front: The Classic Italian Memoir of World War 1

Emilio Lussu · 278 pages

A rediscovered Italian masterpiece chronicling the author's experience as an infantryman, newly translated and reissued to commemorate the centennial of World War I. Taking its place alongside works by Ernst JŸnger, Robert Graves, and Erich Maria Remarque, Emilio Lussu's memoir is one of the most affecting accounts to come out of the First World War. A classic in Italy but virtually unknown in the

Testament of Youth: An Autobiographical Study of the Years 1900 - 1925

Vera Brittain · 661 pages

A vivid and passionate record of the years 1900 to 1925, this is Vera Brittain's haunting autobiography - a portrait of a young girl's life in prewar England and a heartbreaking document of the holocaust of war. The author tells us about the war she saw and poignantly describes how it was to watch the gradual destruction of her generation. Raised in provincial comfort during a gentle age, Britt

Undertones of War

Edmund Blunden · 256 pages

Storm of Steel

Ernst Junger · 320 pages

Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph

T.E. Lawrence · 714 pages

Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia

Michael Korda

Lawrence of Arabia

Alistair MacLean

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.

Infantry Attacks

Erwin Rommel · 276 pages

"Based on his own experiences in the First World War, Rommel discusses and analyses the tactics that lay behind his success ... As a leader of a small unit, he proved himself an aggressive and versatile commander, with a reputation of using the terrain of the battleground for his own advantage, for gathering in as much intelligence on the enemy, as he could, and for seeking out and exploiting enem

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 Arms of Krupp: The Rise and Fall of the Industrial Dynasty that Armed Germany at War

William Manchester · 1,022 pages

They Called It Passchendaele

Lyn Macdonald · 278 pages

The third battle of Ypres, culminating in a desperate struggle for the ridge and little village of Passchendaele, was one of the most appalling campaigns in the First World War. In this masterly piece of oral history, Lyn Macdonald lets over 600 participants speak for themselves. A million Tommies, Canadians and Anzacs assembled at the Ypres Salient in the summer of 1917, mostly raw young troops k

The Missing of the Somme

Geoff Dyer · 157 pages

'Head bowed, rifle on his back, a soldier is silhouetted against the going down of the sun, looking at the grave of a dead comrade, remembering him. A photograph from the war, is also a photograph of the way the war will be remembered. It is a photograph of the future, of the future's view of the past. We will remember them' Relying more on personal impressions than systematic analysis, Geoff Dyer

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

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 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

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."

The Bloody White Baron: The Extraordinary Story of the Russian Nobleman Who Became the Last Khan of Mongolia

James Palmer · 288 pages

Roman Ungern von Sternberg was a Baltic aristocrat, a violent, headstrong youth posted to the wilds of Siberia and Mongolia before the First World War. After the Bolshevik Revolution, the Baron - now in command of a lethally effective rabble of cavalrymen - conquered Mongolia, the last time in history a country was seized by an army mounted on horses. He was a Kurtz-like figure, slaughtering every

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.

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

Joseph E. Persico · 496 pages

World War 1: A History From Beginning to End

Henry Freeman · 50 pages