Lusitania

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 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 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

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

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.

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 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 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

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 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

The First Day on the Somme

Martin Middlebrook · 365 pages

"Britain suffered 60,000 casualties during The Battle of the Somme, July 1, 1916. This portrait of war on the front line draws upon official sources, local newspapers, autobiographies, novels, poems, and above all, on the recollections of hundreds of survivors."--Jacket.

Silent Night: The Remarkable Christmas Truce of 1914

Stanley Weintraub · 168 pages

When her husband was diagnosed with leukemia, Catherine Dornan and their two young sons accompanied him to New York, during the Christmas season, for a life-saving operation. Hoping to divert the boys from worry about their father, and to temper her own near despair, on Christmas Eve Catherine takes the boys to see Rockefeller Center's famous Christmas tree. When they stop to listen to a street mu

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 Beauty and the Sorrow: An Intimate History of the First World War

Peter Englund · 532 pages

Englund examines the history of World War I through the experiences of the average man and woman-- not only the tragedy and horror but also the absurdity and even, at times, the beauty. In a brilliant mosaic of perspectives that moves between the home front and the front lines, he reconstructs the feelings, impressions, experiences, and shifting spirits of twenty particular people, allowing them t

World War One: History In An Hour

Rupert Colley · 86 pages

Know your stuff: Read a concise history of World War One in just one hour. World War One brought with it the world's first experience of Total War, involving all of the world's great powers, polarized between the Triple Entente, lead by Britain, France and Russia, and the Central Powers, dominated by Germany and Austria-Hungary. Around 9 million men lost their lives in a conflict that introduced t

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,

Gallipoli

Alan Moorehead · 384 pages

When Turkey unexpectedly sided with Germany in World War I, Winston Churchill, as Sea Lord for the British, conceived a plan: smash through the Dardanelles, reopen the Straits to Russia, and immobilize the Turks. On the night of March 18, 1915, this plan nearly succeeded -- the Turks were virtually beaten. But poor communication left the Allies in the dark, allowing the Turks to prevail and the Al

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 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.