World War I Collection Spotlight - Overview

"... examines the chain of events that led to war and what could reasonably have been done differently to avoid it. In this highly original and intellectually challenging book, he constructs plausible worlds, some better, some worse, that might have developed. --

A highly original and revelatory narrative history of World War I that brings into focus its least examined, most stirring component: the experience of the average man or woman. To create this intimate picture of what war was really like, Englund draws from the diaries, journals, and letters of 20 individuals. A brilliant mosaic of perspectives, the narrative reads with a depth of feeling and an evocation of time and place.

Ten-part series offers insight and analysis to provide a coherent and strategic military narrative. Places World War I in its proper global context, dispelling the conventional myth of the war as a European conflict only. The human tragedy is placed in a wider political and military context, going beyond the Western Front to encompass the entire world.

"More dramtatic than fiction ... THE GUNS OF AUGUST is a magnificent narrative--beautifully organized, elegantly phrased, skillfully paced and sustained ... The product of painstaking and sophisticated research." CHICAGO TRIBUNE Historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Barbara Tuchman has brought to life again the people and events that led up to World War I. With attention to fascinating detail, and an intense knowledge of her subject and its...

"In the late summer of 1918, after four long years of senseless, stagnant fighting, the Western Front erupted. The bitter four-month struggle that ensued--known as the Hundred Days Campaign--saw some of the bloodiest and most ferocious combat of the Great War, as the Allies grimly worked to break the stalemate in the west and end the conflict that had decimated Europe. In Hundred Days, acclaimed military historian Nick Lloyd leads readers into the...

"Forged in the fires of German unification in the 19th century, the German Army in 1914 was the ultimate expression of national identity; yet, despite its tactical and operational successes on the battlefields of World War I, it failed to either capitalize on its victories or learn from its defeats. Drawing on more than a half-century of research and teaching, Professor Dennis Showalter analyzes its place in German society, the challenges of modernization...