World War I Reading List

[Paul in Qatar]

Tuchman's The Proud Tower is critical to understand the background of the great war. The new Sleepwalkers is more academic, provocative (maybe even seminal) but a much denser read.

 

I actually like Jeff Saahra's To the Last Man. It is informative and gives you a sense of the times. Besides, I like Pershing.

[Richard Lindquist]

A couple of "special interest" books:

 

War Underground: The Tunnellers of the Great War by Alexander Barrie

Good history of underground mining from Hill 60 through Messines Ridge

 

 

Chemical Soldiers: British Gas Warfare in World War I by Donald Richter

Good discussion of Brit gas, the Livens Projector, and Brit preference for "cloud gas" as opposed to projectile delivered gas.

[Colin Williams]

 

The Myth of the Great War: How the Germans Won the Battles and How the Americans Saved the Allies by John Mosier

 

 

 

There are a few good tidbits in Mosier's book, but overall it's awful.

[cjpaul]

In Stahlgewittern, Ernst Jünger

In English, Storm of Steel

[Jeff]

I started reading An American Soldier in World War I on Kindle. It's basically letters he wrote to his future wife and some author input. He hasn't seen combat yet so I'll withhold an opinion for now.

[Tony Evans]

 

There are a few good tidbits in Mosier's book, but overall it's awful.

 

 

Mosier is a purveyor of sensationalistic dreck.

[BillB]

I've read a few books about WW1 but haven't read nearly as much as I have on more recent wars. I'm especially interested in personal accounts but am also interested in anything else that the members of this grate sight would recommend.

Here you go Harold, sorry it's only authors & titles but am away from the books.

 

As others have said Martin Middlebrook and Lyn McDonalds stuff are pretty good, and for general accounts you might also like

 

Denis Winter, Death's Men: Soldiers of the Great War, uses lots of stuff from published & unpublished memoirs and covers recruitment, training, front line life, leave & what came after demobilisation. Much better than his hatchet job on Haig.

 

Richard Holmes, Tommy: The British Soldier on the Western Front, bit of a tome but easy reading and covers just about anything you can think of connected to the title by one of Britain's foremost military historians & expert on the First World War, sadly deceased

 

For personal accounts you might like:

 

Edwin Campion Vaughn, Some Desperate Glory: The Diary of a Young Officer, memoir about his experiences as a platoon commander at the Battle of Passchendaele

 

George Coppard MM, With a Machine Gun to Cambrai, memoir of an NCO in the Machine Gun Corps

 

John Jackson, Private 12768: Memoir of a Tommy, diary kept while serving with the 1st Battalion Cameron Highlanders from 1914 thru to 1919; good counterpoint to the futility school of thought and one of only a handful of memoirs by Other Ranks

 

I'd also recommend a couple of novels,

 

Frederic Manning, Her Privates We, based on the author's service in France with the 7th Battalion King's Shropshire Light Infantry 1916-17; as a former soldier I think you'll appreciate the portrayal of military service. And the swearing.

 

John Harris, Covenant With Death, based on experiences of members of a Kitchener battalion (the Sheffield City Battalion aka 12th (Service) Battalion, York & Lancaster Regiment) from volunteering in 1914 to the first day on the Somme; IMHO one of the best coverage of what motivated the Kitchener men.

 

Hope that helps, I can prolly dig out a few more if you're stuck.

BillB

[Harold Jones]

What I've read so far.

Cecil Lewis Sagittarius Rising I came across this in a used bookstore, it's the memoir of a WW1 fighter pilot who joined the RFC in 1915 and progressed from flying Morane Salnier Parasols to the Sopwith Camel in 1918.

John Keegan's First World War

Phillip Massie's Castles of Steel

Barbara Tuchman Guns of August

John Eisenhower Yanks: The Epic Story of the American Army in World War I

Nick Lloyd Hundred Days: The Campaign that Ended World War I I snagged it off the new books shelf at the library back in February. It's an interesting read.

Frederic Manning, Her Privates We

In Progress

Richard Holmes, Tommy: The British Soldier on the Western Front

Next up

Denis Winter, Death's Men: Soldiers of the Great War

[Harold Jones]

Was digging around on Gutenberg.org for WW1 personal accounts and came across Life in a Tank http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/28319 It's only 90 pages long and seems to have been written before the end of the war so it doesn't name locations or specific battles but it's still an interesting look at some of the earliest tank training and use in combat. Once thing that sounds weird is that he refers to tanks as "Willies" almost as often as he does tanks.

Edited August 2, 2014 by Harold Jones

[MiloMorai]

At the Sharp End and Shock Troops by Tom Cook

 

http://www.amazon.ca/At-Sharp-End-Canadians-1914-1916/dp/0670067342/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b

http://www.amazon.ca/Shock-Troops-Canadians-Fighting-1917-18/dp/0670067350/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b

 

Internet

http://archive.org/search.php?query=war%20in%20the%20air%20AND%20collection%3Atoronto

[Michael Eastes]

 

The Eastern Front (authors name escapes me) is pretty much the only book to cover the eastern front of the First World War.

Good book, if for no reason other than there isn't anything else that covers the whole war there, not simply Tanenberg and Masurian Lakes then a big black hole and *poof* Russian revolution and it's time to go west for kaiserschlacht.

You may be thinking of Norman Stone's book on the Eastern Front. Good book, but given it's age I wonder if there is anything better out there.

 

I've just started Collision of Empires, by Prit Buttar, published this year. AFAIK, it's the only book in English dealing with the Eastern Front since Stone's book. I'm enjoying it so far, but I'm not an actual historian, so YMMV. Also, it only covers the 1914 campaigns. Hopefully a full tome on the east in WWI will come out during the centennial.

[DogDodger]

Mosier is a purveyor of sensationalistic dreck.

I bought The Blitzkrieg Myth on a whim; that's the last of Mosier's books I'll waste money on.

 

On the subject of WW1, though, many good ones have been mentioned. Relating to early tanks, Trevor Pidgeon's The Tanks at Flers was excellent, and I also enjoyed Bryn Hammond's Cambrai. I don't think I've seen Fletcher's Tanks and Trenches mentioned, either. It's made up of first-person accounts of WW1 tankers.

[Nobu]

I enjoyed reading Yankee Doughboy by Connell Albertine.

[Colin Williams]

 

 

The Eastern Front (authors name escapes me) is pretty much the only book to cover the eastern front of the First World War.

Good book, if for no reason other than there isn't anything else that covers the whole war there, not simply Tanenberg and Masurian Lakes then a big black hole and *poof* Russian revolution and it's time to go west for kaiserschlacht.

You may be thinking of Norman Stone's book on the Eastern Front. Good book, but given it's age I wonder if there is anything better out there.

 

I've just started Collision of Empires, by Prit Buttar, published this year. AFAIK, it's the only book in English dealing with the Eastern Front since Stone's book. I'm enjoying it so far, but I'm not an actual historian, so YMMV. Also, it only covers the 1914 campaigns. Hopefully a full tome on the east in WWI will come out during the centennial.

 

Michael,

 

I'll be very interested in your thoughts on the book. I recently picked up Wawro's "Mad Catastrophe..." which is very interesting so far but also extremely harsh on the Austro-Hungarians. Some balance might be in order!