Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #125625 in Books
• Published on: 1993-11-04
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 388 pages

Synopsis
The battle of Verdun lasted ten months. It was a battle in which at least 700,000 men fell, along a front of fifteen miles. Its aim was less to defeat the enemy than bleed him to death and a battleground whose once fertile terrain is even now a haunted wilderness. Alistair Horne's classic work, continuously in print for over fifty years, is a profoundly moving, sympathetic study of the battle and the men who fought there. It shows that Verdun is a key to understanding the First World War to the minds of those who waged it, the traditions that bound them and the world that gave them the opportunity.

Customer Reviews

Fantastic
This book is excellent - if you are interested in Verdun and the Great War generally, this is just the sort of book needed for any aspect of it. A real shame Mr Horne didn't cover the whole conflict in a similar format.

It's a must for any visitor to the battlefields, not least as it will get your interest going nicely.

Outdated
This is a very nice book to read, but it is outdated. A number of important studies has been published since Alistair Horne published hes book. There is a relatively new and good biography of General Erich von Falkenhayn, "Falkenhayn. Politisches Denken und Handeln im Kaiserreich" by Holger Afflerbach. In English there is Robert A. Doughty's excellent "Pyrrhic Victory - French Stratetgy and Operations in the Great War". I is not a dishonor for a historian, if newer books makes his or her text a little obsolete. The only flaw of Horne is to make Falkenhayn to look a bit silly. Falkenhayn is not a man who can't be whitewashed, but he wasn't as foolish as Horne claims. An immoral and cynic General, yes, but not a fool.

My very first Great War book
That is, I got it from the library many years ago, translated into Danish. Back when WW1 was not that long ago and the old people could tell me how it was.
And the impression it made on me has been with me ever since. Mud, blood, gas, terror, futility, hopelessness.
It is one of those books that shake the very foundations of existence. Then you discover other books on WW1, and WW2, and you become just a little bit jaded.
But I always remembered this book and finally got around to see if Amazon had it. It still is terrible.