Best book on WW I ??

[toddzilla]

I'm looking for a moderately priced book on world war one, a basic overview-nothing super detailed. what's the standard that tells the true story?

thanks

[JohnKleeb]

1. I think John Keegan wrote a good book on it

BTW best WWI one book I read is the epic All Quiet on the Western Front. Sigh what beauty.

[ulysses]

3. the Keegan book is very good.

:thumbsup:

[JohnKleeb]

6. I didnt read it, Ive seen it when Ive been at the bookstore though

I am getting Johnny Got His Gun this X-Mas, I was recommended it by another DUer, All Quiet simply brought me to tears, I loved that book. Sigh you know I began not to care that Paul was technically an enemy of the US, that was the most beautiful thing.

[ulysses]

9. Keegan's a good historian.

All Quiet is a wonderful book. Nonfiction accounts of either WWI or WWII from the Germans actually doing the fighting are hard to find for the lay reader, which makes Remarque that much more important to my mind.

[JohnKleeb]

12. I have books mostly by Ambrose

but I have an exception account of the battle of Stalingrad and some books by Corneilus Ryan.

[ulysses]

20. if you want Stalingrad

Antony Beevor's book of that name is excellent.

Ambrose is ok, but he tended to wave the flag a bit much for my taste. That said, I enjoyed Citizen Soldiers.

[JohnKleeb]

22. I have Craig's

Which is good too. The name of the book I got is Enemy at the Gates, same name as the Jude Law movie, but its like 30 years older than it. Stalingrad is real interesting, one of the most intriguing battles.

[ulysses]

24. Stalingrad

turned the tide of WWII. Without Stalingrad, and the Soviet sacrifice (and Hitlerian stupidity) there, there is likely no D-Day on June 6, 1944.

[JohnKleeb]

26. good thing Hitler was a moran eh

Good thing those "horrible" Russians were brave sobs.

[ulysses]

29. honestly, yeah.

If Hitler had taken the wiser course, and bypassed Stalingrad for the oil fields, one quakes for the idea of how we might be living now.

[fishnfla]

10. The First World War

by John Keegan. Knopf publishers.

Good personal accounts are Good-bye to All That, by the poet Robert Graves and Storms of Steel by Ernst Junger

[Raenelle]

5. Me too JohnKleeb

I came on here to post All Quiet, then saw an overview was what was in mind.

For the start of the war, of course, Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August is great.

[JohnKleeb]

7. all quiet is so beautiful, its one of the best books I ever read

Here are my fave quotes
"'But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony--Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?'"

"I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another."

"Do I walk? Have I feet still? I raise my eyes, I let them move round, and turn myself with them, one circle, one circle, and I stand in the midst. All is as usual. Only the Militiaman Stanislaus Katczinsky has died. Then I know nothing more."

"He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the Western Front. He had fallen forward and lay on the earth as though sleeping. Turning him over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come."

Theres something about that book, its simply amazing.

[Raenelle]

11. It creeps up on you, too

Every time I reread it, as I start it, I wonder to myself if I hadn't overrated it earlier. By the middle, I know, of course, I haven't. By the end, I'm completely in Remarque's hands, utterly horrified at that war, at war, at what humans can do to each other. It's really an amazing book--among the top 5 anti-war statements of all time.

[JohnKleeb]

16. part of my evolution from a so so person on war to a dove

[Swede]

19. the John Keegan book is very good.

It explains the why's and how's of the whole mess.

[ulysses]

2. Martin Gilbert, _The First World War_

The best overall, one-volume history I've read in a while.

[trof]

4. The Guns of August

by Barbara Tuchman
http://www.abbottsystems.com/reviews.html

[mitchum]

8. second that...

It is the type of overview toddzilla is looking for

[denverbill]

17. Third that, with a caveat.

Guns of August is really only about the roots causes of WWI and the early war.

However, IIRC, it won a Pulitzer Price, so that's gotta tell you something about the book.

[mccormack98]

13. Here's one

The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman. Amazon List Price: $14.95

Reads like a novel. It documents the events leading to the war and then carries you through August 1914 -- the first month of the war -- when the German invasion was finally turned back.

[DemOutWest]

14. WWI

Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman

[DemOutWest]

15. Should have checked

the replies first. Look like it has been suggested a few times. :-)

[toddzilla]

18. i'll pick from those two..

thanks for the suggestions!!

[Superfly]

21. Johnny Get your Gun

is fabulous, albeit very sad.

Also try Rifleman Dodd (for a look into the Napoleonic wars)

[ulysses]

23. if you want the perspective of the guy in the trench,

look for anything by Lyn Macdonald. There's a series of books, titled by the years of the war, in which she chronicles her interviews with its survivors. Good stuff. I think she started in the 1970s, before those veterans started really dying off of old age.

There are three perspectives one can take on WWI, or I guess any war - the commanders, the guy holding the gun and the civilians. Read as much as you can for an overall account. I just bought a book called Tolkien and the Great War - I've still never read the LOTR books, but the premise of this one is that Tolkien's experiences as an officer at the Somme, and the experience of losing most of his closest friends in the fighting, gave rise to the LOTR mythology.

I take this as a truism: World War One gave birth to the world in which we live.

[fishnfla]

28. you are right

the irony of WWI is that mechanical warfare, where men kill from afar, came in direct conflict with the old way of waves of attacking warriors spurred on by selfless patriotism. the commanders sent hundreds of thousands of men to their deaths by machine guns.it was insanity.
nowadays the death is from a touch of a button far away.

[Snow]

25. A wonderful novel based in that era, from the perspective of

an Italian soldier, is "A Soldier in the Great War", Mark Helprin. It's beautiful writing, and the author's political views, which I've heard a pretty conservative, do not come through at all.

[Emboldened Chimp]

27. Robert Graves wrote a great autobiography

about his experiences as an officer called "Goodbye To All That".

[Padraig18]

30. The Guns of August.

A brilliant, well-written book, and perfect for a first-time reader. :)

[GOPisEvil]

31. By Barbara Tuchman. Great book.

[no_hypocrisy]

32. A series of books called Our Times: Birth of American in the 20th Century

by Mark Sullivan. It is very well written from a journalistic standpoint, good prose, interesting facts, and it covers everything from the pre-war alliances to the federal government using public relations to promote the draft to Ho Chi Min and other young statesmen calling on Woodrow Wilson to support their efforts to bring about new countries.

You can find it in most public libraries and I saw it in a used book store yesterday as well.

[11 Bravo]

33. Can't improve on the factual accounts suggested here.

But if you ever desire to move into the realm of fiction, Erich Maria Remarque's (sp?) "All Quiet on the Western Front" has no peers.

[Character Assassin]

34. Goodbye to All That, by Robert Graves. Scathing.

[Emboldened Chimp]

35. Yeah, I mentioned that above

Great book. Couldn't put it down. I love the story about how his parents received a letter that he was dead!

[Character Assassin]

36. Sorry, overlooked that before posting.

Total indictment of the English class system, as well.