Top Tips - Recommended World War One Reads

[@Thecatladybooknook_PennyD]

Definitely saving this for reference

[@TomBrzezicki]

An interesting book I read last year was “The Lost History of 1914: Reconsidering the Year the Great War Began” by American journalist Jack Beatty. When I was a lad, the Great War was generally thought to have been an historical inevitability. The standard argument was that the combination of large armies, imperial rivalries, international treaties, and unstoppable troop railway timetables meant that it was only a matter of time before “Some damned thing in the Balkans”-as Bismarck used to say-set Europe ablaze. Beatty’s book challenges that idea with a series of chapters highlighting all the other paths that events around the globe could have taken in 1914 that would not have resulted in a world war. The chapter I found most fascinating was the one dealing with tensions in Ireland over the granting of Home Rule. Beatty describes how there was a real risk of civil war breaking out in Ulster in early 1914 due to Protestant opposition to being ruled from Dublin. If the UK had become embroiled in civil war, there would have been no way they could have sent an Expeditionary Force to the continent to help their French and Belgium allies, which might have exercised a restraining hand on France and slowed the slide to war.

[@JentheLibrarianreads]

Great recommendations here, many I’ve read but lots I haven’t too. My recommendation to add to the list is The Missing of the Somme by Geoff Dyer. It’s an unusual little book but is mostly a commentary on how we remember the war (which is my area of expertise, so always one of my top recommendations). For anyone interested in something on the more academic side of this, Posthumous Lives by Bette London is exceptional.

[@Lokster71]

Thank you. I almost put Geoff Dyer on the list. I read that before I read Paul Fussell because Geoff Dyer referred to that book a lot.

[@ariannefowler455]

This is a great list! I'm going to save this list for further reading. I read The Facemaker this month as part of my own WW1 reading project. It was very well done and very readable considering the subject matter. Breakdown sounds like one I'd be interested in. I hope to finally read Nick Lloyd in Jan or Feb. I think Peg at The History Shelf was going to do a readalong of some of his books. I'm not sure what she has planned but I hope to take part in it.

[@Lokster71]

Oh, I'll keep an eye on Peg's channel. Thank you.

[@brucehilton1662]

Probbly for me the best is Sleepwalkers thouogh one could arguie itts not about the war itself but the runup. John Keegan's The First World War is quite readable. Tuchman is always good. Max Hastings I haven't read but will check him out.

[@Lokster71]

Thanks. I did think about putting Keegan's book on the list. Hastings is good. He writes across a lot of different conflicts. Starting with the Falklands War, which he covered as a journalist with the British fleet. He's got a big, chunky book on the Vietnam War that I'd really like to read.