Product Description

It was to be the war to end all wars, and it began at 11.15 on the morning of June 28, 1914, in an outpost of the Austro-Hungarian Empire called Sarajevo. It would end officially almost five years later. Unoffically, it has never ended: The horrors we live with today were born in the First World War. It left millions - civilians and soldiers - maimed or dead. And it left us with new technologies of death: tanks, planes, and submarines; reliable rapid-fire machine guns, poison gas and chemical warfare. It introduced us to unrestricted war on civilians and mistreatment of prisoners. Most of all, it changed our world. In its wake, empires toppled, monarchies fell, whole populations lost their national indentities as political systems and geographic boundaries relaligned. Instabilities were institutionalised, enmities enshrined. Manners, mores, codes of behaviour, literature, education and class distinctions - all underwent a vast sea change. In all these ways, the twentieth century can be said to have been born on the morning of June 28, 1914.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #29250 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10-10
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 680 pages

Review
"Written by one of our generation's most respected historians, it charts the Great War from its inception with a rigorous attention to dates, facts and statistics but coloured in with human perspective and poetry" (BIG ISSUE IN THE NORTH )

About the Author
Born in London in 1936 and now resident in north London, Sir Martin Gilbert was educated at Highgate School and Magdalene College, Oxford. An outstanding historian of the 20th century, he became the official biographer of Sir Winston Churchill in 1968 and has written to great acclaim on the Holocaust and the events of the Second World War.

Customer Reviews

All-encompassing beginners guide
Many works have been published on WW1. What makes this one different is that all fronts are given detailed treatment, not just the Western front, but also the Eastern, Italian, Palestine, Mesopotanian, Salonica, Gallipoli, East Africa, the naval front, and to a certain extent the air war. The Pacific front is mentioned but not really covered. Gilbert attempts to personalise the war by filling the history with personal anecdotes, and this succeeds to an extent. You will not find a survey of what motivated millions of young men to sign up, but you will find the comments of one or two of them on the subject. The book is written without bias, although most of the material describes the Entente side. The political issues are well analysed, although military issues are barely considered. Breakthroughs just happen, with no further explanation. You will not guess from the book that tanks were present at Paschendaele, or indeed were prone to sinking in the mud. You will never read about German use of tanks, although you will see the statistic that the Germans built a tenth of the tanks that the Entente built. Blame for the war is laid firmly at the door of Austria, although the part played by their Chief of Staff in all this is barely mentioned. In conclusion, a good primer in that it is all-encompassing. Not much here however for the specialist, although uniquely the book shows the war also from the point of view of both European and Palestinian Jewry.

A FIRST-CLASS HISTORY
This is certainly one of the finest single-volume histories of the First World War that I have read: concise, clear and comprehensive. I recommend it most highly both for content and readability. It covers land sea and air, the home fronts, all the fighting forces, the high commands, and the fighting men. A paricularly welcome feature of this excellent book are the stories of individuals. It is indeed a true masterpiece of the historian's craft.

A masterpiece of history

This is a great history boook, one of the definitive histories of the great war. Very detailed and very accessible.

I msut have read a different book to the some of the critics on here, GIlbert has gone to great lenghths to write about other fronts and areas where the war was fought and what was going on. For example I remember a paragraph about a British Pacific island being visited by a German warship early in the war. The people on the island were so isolated and remote they werent aware of the war and had helped the warship with supplies, unthinkable in our world of instant varied communication. They are loads of stories like this from the Russian Front, the Italinan front, the war in China, Africa, the Pacific, the USA and of course the Western front.

This is great narrative history. I would give it 10 stars.