The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914

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

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.

Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World

Margaret MacMillan · 624 pages

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.

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.

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

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

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

Erik Larson · 464 pages

It is a story that many of us think we know but don't, and Erik Larson tells it thrillingly, switching between hunter and hunted while painting a larger portrait of America at the height of the Progressive Era. Full of glamour and suspense, Dead Wake brings to life a cast of evocative characters, from famed Boston bookseller Charles Lauriat to pioneering female architect Theodate Pope to President

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany

William L. Shirer · 1,264 pages

The First World War: A Complete History

Martin Gilbert · 688 pages

The First World War

John Keegan · 475 pages

The First World War created the modern world. A conflict of unprecedented ferocity, it abruptly ended the relative peace and prosperity of the Victorian era, unleashing such demons of the twentieth century as mechanized warfare and mass death. It also helped to usher in the ideas that have shaped our times--modernism in the arts, new approaches to psychology and medicine, radical thoughts about ec

The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory 1874-1932

William Manchester · 896 pages

Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East

Michael B. Oren · 464 pages

Though it lasted for only six tense days in June, the 1967 Arab-Israeli war never really ended. Every crisis that has ripped through this region in the ensuing decades, from the Yom Kippur War of 1973 to the ongoing intifada, is a direct consequence of those six days of fighting. Michael B. Oren’s magnificent *Six Days of War*, an internationally acclaimed bestseller, is the first comprehensive ac

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.

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

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

Citizens of London: The Americans who Stood with Britain in its Darkest, Finest Hour

Lynne Olson · 496 pages

In Citizens of London, Lynne Olson has written a work of World War II history even more relevant and revealing than her acclaimed Troublesome Young Men. Here is the behind-the-scenes story of how the United States forged its wartime alliance with Britain, told from the perspective of three key American players in London: Edward R. Murrow, Averell Harriman, and John Gilbert Winant. Drawing from a v

The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000

Paul Kennedy · 677 pages

El eminente historiador Paul Kennedy analiza y describe el auge y la caída de las grandes potencias a lo largo de los últimos cinco siglos. La nación proyecta su poder militar según sus recursos económicos, pero el alto coste de mantener la supremacía militar la precipita a la decadencia. las grandes potencias en crisis reaccionan gastando más en defensa y se debilitan desviando recursos productiv

Intent to Destroy: Russia’s Two-Hundred-Year Quest to Dominate Ukraine

Eugene Finkel · 336 pages

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"--

Cleopatra: A Life

Stacy Schiff · 441 pages

From back cover: Famous long before she was notorious, Cleopatra has gone down in history for all the wrong reasons; her supple personality and the drama of her circumstances have been lost. In a masterly return to the classical sources, Stacy Schiff boldly separates fact from fiction to rescue the magnetic queen whose death ushered in a new world order.

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.

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

Eugene Rogan · 512 pages

Evaluates the impact of World War I on the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East as a whole, explaining the region's less-understood but essential contributions to the war and the establishment of present-day conflicts. In 1914 the Ottoman Empire was depleted of men and resources after years of war against Balkan nationalist and Italian forces. But as the powers of Europe slid inexorably toward war,

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,