This is far from an exhaustive list of books about the Great War. I've picked out books which look interesting, along with a selection of the top-ranking books on the subject from the amazon.co.uk catalogue.
Accrington Pals Trail
William Turner / Paperback / 1998
Synopsis: Account of a Pals Battalion's service throughout the war starting with their journey from Lancashire to the training camps in England and Wales to the villages and battlefields of France, illustrated with pictures and maps.
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All the King's Men
Nigel McCrery / Paperback / 1999
Synopsis: This is the true story of King George V's own Sandringham Company which disappeared during World War I. Formed from the workers on his estate in Norfolk, they went into battle at Gallipoli where the whole battalion disappeared without trace.
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Anthologies: a Deep Cry
A. Powell (Editor) / Paperback / 1998
Synopsis: Arranged by dates of death, this book gives the short life-and-death stories, including an account of the battle in which he dies, of 66 published British poets killed in Flanders fields, with poems, letters and diaries by each one.
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Army Service Records of the First World War
Simon Fowler, et al / Paperback / 1998
Synopsis: This revised edition offers an introduction to the surviving service record for World War I non-commissioned officers and ordinary soldiers. It includes the 1998 release of service records for officers, with detailed explanations and illustrations of the most common forms to be found among the records. It reveals how to search the Medal Rolls for awards for gallantry and for service, as well as describing other sources that can be used to track and illuminate an individual's war service, notably war diaries, trench maps and major collections outside the Public Record Office. The records are brought to life by case studies of two ordinary soldiers and one notable officer - Lieutenant Siegfried Sassoon.
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Chronicle of Youth
Vera Brittain / Paperback / 2000
Synopsis: Vera Brittain's bestselling "Testament of Youth" was based on her own copious diaries, which have a much greater immediacy than the account written for publication. These are those diaries, beginning with the carefree summer of 1913 and ending with her emergence as a committed pacifist.
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Chronicles of the Great War
Peter Simpkins, David Gibbon (Editor) / Hardcover / 1997
Synopsis: A detailed account of the Great War 1915-1918. Not just an account of the great battles and leaders, this book also describes the daily routine of the soldier at the front in his own words. Over 400 authentic photographs illustrate the enormity of the carnage that was described as the war to end all wars.
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Conscripts
Ilana Bet-El / Hardcover / 1999
Synopsis: The classic image of World War I is of dashing young volunteers out to defend King and country - but 2.5 million men were conscripts. The war started out well; it was to be the war to end all wars, and over by Christmas 1914. Men rushed to join up, to become part of the drama, and before long there was much battle, blood, death and heroism. Then trench warfare set in. Casualties mounted, and the stream of volunteers began to dwindle. But the army still needed more men. In January 1916 Britain broke with centuries of tradition, and conscription was introduced for the first time. But the memory of the conscripts has not lived on - they are the lost legions of the Great War. The conscripts were the soldiers of the second half of the war, but they arrived too late: after the Battle of the Somme in July 1916. Billed as the ultimate battle of the war, it was a colossal failure. Even worse, it failed to end the war, which meandered on for another two years. Throughout this time the conscripts held the line, fought another two major offensives, and brought an eventual victory. But the British public had lost interest: there was too much blood and death. The drama had become a tragedy, and the volunteers were already scripted as heroes. This is the story of civilians who became soldiers, fought and - those who survived - went home. From manual workers to clerks and solicitors, it is the story of the unknown soldiers of World War I, who went to war and fought as ordinary men experiencing an extreme and unique event in their lives.
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Doctors in the Great War
Ian Whitehead / Hardcover / 1999
Synopsis: This book examines the role of the doctor in war, with reference to the Western front 1914-1918.
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Doing His Bit
Robert M. Greig / Paperback / 1999
Synopsis: Between January and August 1920, "The Shetland Times" reporter Robert M. Greig wrote a series of articles on his experiences on the Western Front in World War I. This book gathers these articles together to provide an insight into the life of an ordinary Shetland soldier in the trenches.
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The Doughboys: America and the First World War
Gary Mead / Hardcover / 2000
Synopsis: More than three million American men, many of them volunteers, joined the A.E.F. in the first 20 months of US involvement in the First World War. Of these, over 50,000 were killed on European soil. These were the Doughboys, the young men recruited from the cities and farms of the United Sates, who travelled across the Atlantic to aid the allies in the trenches and on the battlefields. without their courage and determination, the outcome of the war would have been very different. Why did America become involved in the First World War? what was the fighting experience of the A.E.F. in France and Russia? most importantly, why has the vital contribution made by the Americans been largely neglected by historians of the great war? Drawing upon the often harrowing personal accounts of the soldiers of the A.E.F., this book establishes the pivotal role played by the Americans in the defeat of the central powers in November 1918. Gary Mead brings together a selection of archive material in an engaging account that is part military history, part social analysis and memoir. This book records the events of the war exclusively from the perspective of the United States, highlighting the crucial part played by the troops of the A.E.F. and exposing the prickly, often turbulent relationship between the American and the allied forces.
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The Enormous Room (The Cummings Typescript Editions)
E. E. Cummings, George James Firmage / Paperback / 1994
Synopsis: Drawing on his experiences in France as a volunteer ambulance-driver, Cummings recounts the series of mistakes that led to his arrest and imprisonment for treason. This edition restores much of the original manuscript and is illustrated with drawings that Cummings made while in prison in France.
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Fields of Memory
Anne Roze / Hardcover / 1999
Synopsis: From mobilization to the Armistice in 1918, this volume recounts the key events of World War I, including the battles of the Marne, Ypres, Flanders, Verdun, Somme and Passchendaele. It draws on a variety of contemporary material, including journals, letters, newspaper reports and the writings of key literary figures of the time, such as Wilfred Owen, Erich Maria Remarque, Andre Maurois and Siegfried Sassoon. The history is illustrated with a combination of photographs and pictures from before the war, during it, and showing the battlefields as they are today. John Foley's serene photographs of the present day landscape contrast with the wartime pictures, to create this wartime record.
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Gallipoli
Alan Moorehead / Paperback / 1997
Synopsis: In 1915 the Gallipoli campaign was designed to break the deadlock in the muddy trenches of the Western Front by forcing the Dardenelles, capturing Constantinople, knocking Turkey out of the war and bringing supplies and arms to the Russians for their immense German Front. It was a costly failure. Using private papers as well as offical records, Alan Moorehead re-creates the drama of Gallipoli with its tragic hesitations and missed opportunities. He describes the heroism of the British and Anzac troops who were hemmed within a few terrible acres of beach and hillside and permanently under shellfire.
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Letters from a Lost Generation
Alan Bishop (Editor), Mark Bostridge (Editor) / Paperback / 1999
Synopsis: This selection of letters, written between 1913 and 1918, between Vera Brittain and four young men - her fiancé Roland Leighton, her brother Edward and their close friends Victor Richardson & Geoffrey Thurlow present a remarkable and profoundly moving portrait of five young people caught up in the cataclysm of total war.
Roland, 'Monseigneur', is the 'leader' & his letters most clearly trace the path leading from idealism to disillusionment. Edward, 'Immaculate of the Trenches', was orderly & controlled, down even to his attire. Geoffrey, the 'non-militarist at heart' had not rushed to enlist but put aside his objections to the war for patriotism's sake. Victor on the other hand, possessed a very sweet character and was known as 'Father Confessor'. An important historical testimony telling a powerful story of idealism, disillusionment and personal tragedy.
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My Boy Jack: the Search for Kipling's Only Son
Tonie Holt, Valmai Holt / Hardcover / 1998
Synopsis: In 1992, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission took the exceptional step of replacing the headstone of an unknown Lieutenant of the Irish Guards. The new headstone was to bear the name Lieutenant John Kipling, son of Rudyard Kipling.
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Nice Girls and Rude Girls
Deborah Thom / Hardcover / 1997
Synopsis: Drawing on official records, contemporary writing and oral history, the author examines the myth and reality of women's "experience of war" and shows that before 1914 they were often supporting dependants, had acquired considerable industrial experience, and how women's trade acitivity was growing. She studies the effect of "dilution and substitution" in making good the loss of industrial workers, the effect of "patriotic fervour", the industrial roles of women, wages, the effect on health and family life and demobilization in 1918-19. The war showed that women were capable of a variety of tasks and they made great sacrifices and contributed massively to the war effort. The effect of war-work has underlined women's positions by their gender; they had changed but not improved their working lives.
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The Oxford Illustrated History of the First World War
Hew Strachan / Hardcover / 1998
Synopsis: World War I has shaped much of the history of the 20th century. It was the first conflict in which aeroplanes, submarines and tanks played a significant role, the first in which casualties on the battlefield outnumbered those from disease. It precipitated the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian and Turkish empires, and it promoted revolution in that of Russia. The USA's entry into the war and the part it played in the peace settlement signalled the arrival on the world stage of a new great power. The victors at Versailles took nationalism as one of their guiding principles; they also aimed at instituting their vision of liberalism and even democracy; the political consequences are still being played out.
In this illustrated book, an international team of contributors explores the war in all its different aspects. From its causes to its consequences, from the Western Front to the Eastern, from the strategy of the politicians to the tactics of the generals, the course of the war is charted and its political and human consequences assessed. Chapters on economic mobilization, the impact on women, the role of propaganda, and the rise of socialism establish the wider social context of fighting which took place at sea and in the air, and which ranged on land from the Flanders trenches to the Balkan mountains and the deserts of the Middle East. While the war was fought on many fronts and in many different ways, the unifying experience of participants was that of the trenches. The legacy of "the war to end wars" - in poetry and prose, in collective memory and political culture - is with us still, 80 years after that first Armistice Day.
Read Amazon.co.uk's review of this book
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(The) Price of Glory
Alistair Horne / Paperback / 1993
Synopsis: Verdun was the battle which lasted ten months; the battle in which at least 700,000 men fell, along a front of 15 miles; the battle whose aim was less to defeat the enemy than bleed him to death on the battleground whose once fertile terrain is even now "the nearest thing to desert in Europe". This book is more than a chronicle of the facts of the battle. It is a sympathetic study of the men who fought there, and shows that Verdun is a key to understanding World War I - a key to the minds of those who waged it, to the traditions that bound it, and to the world that created them. This edition contains a new preface, and some new photographs.
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Sepoys in the Trenches
Gordon Corrigan / Hardcover / 1999
Synopsis: An account of the two-division Indian Corps which arrived in Europe just in time for First Ypres.
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Shot at Dawn: Executions in World War One by Authority of the British Army Act
Julian Pukowski, Julian Sykes / Hardcover / 1998
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True World War I Stories
John Lewis, et al / Paperback / 1999
Synopsis: This is a collection of nearly 60 personal accounts of the war to end all wars, including the first gas attack, life in the trenches, Gallipoli, the war at sea, aerial dogfights and life as a prisoner of war. It is a record by those who were there at some of the bloodiest battles of the conflict including Loos, Mons, Ypres and the Somme, from the opening moves through to the day that peace was signed.
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VCs of the First World War: Passchendaele 1917
Steve Snelling / Hardcover / 1998
Synopsis: In the VCS OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR series, including many eyewitness accounts, Snelling charts the lives and deeds of those men who fought in the Passchendaele campaign and were awarded the Victoria Cross.
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Veterans: The Last Survivors of the Great War
Richard van Emden, Steve Humphries / Hardcover / 1998
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With a Machine Gun to Cambrai
George Coppard / Paperback / 1999
Synopsis: In August 1914, after lying about his age, the 16-year-old George Coppard enlisted in Kitchener's army. Serving with the Machine Gun Corps, he fought in the battles of Loos, Somme and Arras, and at Cambrai, where he was badly wounded and won the Military Medal for Bravery. This book is based on diaries that the author kept, against military regulation, during his service in France. It is one of the few accounts of the war to be written by a private soldier rather than an officer, and as such it paints a vivid and horrifying picture of life in the trenches as seen by someone at the very bottom of the military hierarchy.
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(The) Women of Royaumont
Eileen Crofton / Paperback / 1999
Synopsis: This story relates the wartime experiences of a group of women who ran a hospital near the trenches during World War I, often under conditions of great hardship. Told largely through letters home and diaries, this book throws light on wartime conditions and the cause of women's suffrage.
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