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

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.

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 Long Shadow: The Legacies of the Great War in the Twentieth Century

David Reynolds · 516 pages

One of the most violent conflicts in the history of civilization, World War I has been strangely forgotten in American culture. It has become a ghostly war fought in a haze of memory, often seen merely as a distant preamble to World War II. In The Long Shadow critically acclaimed historian David Reynolds seeks to broaden our vision by assessing the impact of the Great War across the twentieth cent

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

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

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.

The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women

Kate Moore · 480 pages

As World War I raged across the globe, hundreds of young women toiled away at the radium-dial factories, where they painted clock faces with a mysterious new substance called radium. Assured by their bosses that the luminous material was safe, the women themselves shone brightly in the dark, covered from head to toe with the glowing dust. With such a coveted job, these "shining girls" were conside

The Great War and Modern Memory

Paul Fussell · 363 pages

In this classic work, Paul Fussell illuminates the British experience on the Western Front from 1914 to 1918, focusing primarily on the literary means by which The Great War has been remembered, conventionalized, and mythologized. Drawing on the work of important wartime poets such as David Jones and Wilfred Owen, on the memoirs of Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, and Edmund Blunden, and on numer

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

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

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 Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper

Hallie Rubenhold · 352 pages

A History of the Wife

Marilyn Yalom · 464 pages

How did marriage, considered a religious duty in medieval Europe, become a venue for personal fulfillment in contemporary America? How did the notion of romantic love, a novelty in the Middle Ages, become a prerequisite for marriage today? And, if the original purpose of marriage was procreation, what exactly is the purpose of marriage for women now?Combining "a scholar's rigor and a storyteller's

Guiding Modern Girls

Kristine Alexander · 297 pages

Across the British Empire and the world, the 1920s and 1930s were a time of unprecedented social and cultural change. Girls and young women were at the heart of many of these shifts, which included the aftermath of the First World War, the enfranchisement of women, and the rise of the flapper or “Modern Girl.” Out of this milieu, the Girl Guide movement emerged as a response to popular concerns ab

A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall Of The Ottoman Empire And The Creation Of The Modern Middle East

David Fromkin · 635 pages

Traces Great Britain's influence on Middle East politics since World War I, and describes Britain's changing interests in the region.

The War That Ended Peace: The Road To 1914

Margaret MacMillan · 761 pages

From the bestselling and award-winning author of Paris 1919 comes a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, a fascinating portrait of Europe from 1900 up to the outbreak of World War I. The century since the end of the Napoleonic wars had been the most peaceful era Europe had known since the fall of the Roman Empire. In the first years of the twentieth century, Europe believed it was marching to a go

The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931

Adam Tooze · 672 pages

"A century after the outbreak of the First World War, a powerful explanation of why the war's legacy continues to shape our world. The war would make a celebrity out of Woodrow Wilson and would ratify the emergence of the US as the dominant force in the world economy"--

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

A Brief History of Misogyny: The World's Oldest Prejudice

Jack Holland · 320 pages

Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983

Barbara Kingsolver · 224 pages

Novelist Barbara Kingsolver began her writing career with Holding the Line. It is the story of how women's lives were transformed by an eighteen-month strike against the Phelps-Dodge Copper Corporation. Set in the small mining towns of Arizona, the story is partly oral history and partly social criticism, exploring the process of empowerment which occurs when people work together as a community.

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

Tim Butcher · 326 pages

"On a summer morning in Sarajevo almost a hundred years ago, a teenager took a pistol out of his pocket and fired not just the opening rounds of the First World War but the starting gun for modern history. By killing Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Gavrilo Princip, started a cycle of events that would leave 15 million dead from fighting between 1914 and 1918 and

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.

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

Catrine Clay · 432 pages