940.3-940.4: History of World War I (2023)

This collection spotlights books, published in the last 10 years, that discuss World War I which lasted from 1914 to 1918. Books featured in this collection will discuss causes and the aftermath of "The Great War" as well as contain histories of significant events and battles.

Updated June 9, 2023
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1

1916 : a global history
Jeffery, Keith
Paper Book
So much of the literature on the First World War centers on the trench warfare of the Western Front, and these were essential battlegrounds. But the war was in fact truly a global conflict, and by focusing on a sequence of events in 1916 across many continents, historian Keith Jeffery's...

2

1917 : war, peace, and revolution
Stevenson, D.
Paper Book
1917 was a year of calamitous events, and one of pivotal importance in the development of the First World War. In 1917: War, Peace, and Revolution, leading historian of World War One, David Stevenson, examines this crucial year in context and illuminates the century that followed. He shows how in...

3

America and the Great War : a Library of Congress illustrated history
Wagner, Margaret E.
Paper Book
Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic Titles of the Year for 2017 "A uniquely colorful chronicle of this dramatic and convulsive chapter in American--and world--history. It's an epic tale, and here it is wondrously well told." --David M. Kennedy, Pulitzer Prize...

4

American midnight : the Great War, a violent peace, and democracy's forgotten crisis
Hochschild, Adam
Paper Book
National Bestseller * One of the year's most acclaimed works of nonfiction A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: New York Times, Washington Post, New Yorker, Chicago Tribune, Kirkus, New York Post, Fast Company From legendary historian Adam Hochschild, a "masterly" (New York Times) reassessment...

5

Behind the lines : WWI's little-known story of German occupation, Belgian resistance, and the band of Yanks who saved millions from starvation : beginnings, 1914
Miller, Jeff
Paper Book
During WWI, the Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB) initiated, organized, and supervised the largest food and relief drive the world had ever known. Working in concert with its counterpart in Belgium, the Comité National, the CRB fed and clothed for four years more than 9 million Belgians and...

6

Charley's war a boy soldier in the Great War
Mills, Pat
Paper Book
From renowned UK comics writer Pat Mills (Marshal Law,nbsp;Requiem,nbsp;Vampire Knight,nbsp;Sláine) and legendary artist Joe Colquhoun (Johnny Red) comes a truly classic piece of British comics history, by turns thrilling, humorous and horrifying. Often heralded as...

7

The confidence men : how two prisoners of war engineered the most remarkable escape in history
Fox, Margalit
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * The Great Escape for the Great War: the astonishing true story of two World War I prisoners who pulled off one of the most ingenious escapes of all time. FINALIST FOR THE EDGAR® AWARD * ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post,<...

8

Dark invasion : 1915 : Germany's secret war and the hunt for the first terrorist cell in America
Blum, Howard.
Paper Book
Combining the pulsating drive of Showtime's Homeland with the fascinating historical detail of such of narrative nonfiction bestsellers as Double Cross and In the Garden of Beasts, Dark Invasion is Howard Blum's gritty, high-energy true-life tale of German espionage and terror on American soil...

9

Dead wake : the last crossing of the Lusitania
Larson, Erik
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * From the bestselling author and master of narrative nonfiction comes the enthralling story of the sinking of the Lusitania "Both terrifying and enthralling."--Entertainment Weekly"Thrilling, dramatic and powerful."...

10

The deluge : the Great War, America, and the remaking of the global order, 1916-1931
Tooze, J. Adam.
Paper Book
Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize - History Finalist for the Kirkus Prize - Nonfiction A searing and highly original analysis of the First World War and its anguished aftermath In the depths of the Great War, with millions dead and no imaginable...

11

Einstein's war : how relativity triumphed amid the vicious nationalism of World War I
Stanley, Matthew
Paper Book
"Stanley is a storyteller par excellence."--The Washington Post Kirkus Review starred review; Publishers Weekly starred review; Booklist starred review The birth of a world-changing idea in the middle of a bloodbath

12

The embrace of unreason : France, 1914-1940
Brown, Frederick
Paper Book
From acclaimed biographer and cultural historian, author of For the Soul of France ("Masterful history" --Henry Kissinger), Zola ("Magnificent" --The New Yorker), and Flaubert ("Impeccable" --James Wood, cover, The New York Times Book Review)--a brilliant...

13

The end of tsarist Russia : the march to World War I and revolution
Lieven, D. C. B.
Paper Book
An Economist Best Book of the YearA Financial Times Best Book of the YearWinner of the the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize Finalist for the Lionel Gelber Prize An Amazon Best Book of...

14

The escape artists : a band of daredevil pilots and the greatest prison break of the Great War
Bascomb, Neal
Paper Book
"Bascomb has unearthed a remarkable piece of hidden history, and told it perfectly. The story brims with adventure, suspense, daring, and heroism." --David Grann, New York Times bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon Neal Bascomb, New York Times best-selling...

15

The fall of the Ottomans : the Great War in the Middle East
Rogan, Eugene L.
Paper Book
"A remarkably readable, judicious and well-researched account" (Financial Times) of World War I in the Middle East By 1914 the powers of Europe were sliding inexorably toward war, and they pulled the Middle East along with them into one of the most...

16

The great Halifax explosion : a World War I story of treachery, tragedy, and extraordinary heroism
Bacon, John U.
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER The "riveting" (National Post) tick-tock account of the largest manmade explosion in history prior to the atomic bomb, and the equally astonishing tales of survival and heroism that emerged from the ashes "Enthralling. ... Gripping. ... A...

17

The great rescue : American heroes, an iconic ship, and the race to save Europe in WWI
Hernon, Peter
Paper Book
Published in commemoration of the centennial of America's entry into World War I, the story of the USS Leviathan, the legendary liner turned warship that ferried U.S. soldiers to Europe--a unique war history that offers a fresh, compelling look at this epic time. When war...

18

The Great World War, 1914-45
Liddle, Peter.
Paper Book
This should be a landmark in military history: a collaborative venture between historians from 20 different countries addressing aspects of The World Wars.

19

The Hello Girls : America's first women soldiers
Cobbs Hoffman, Elizabeth
Paper Book
In 1918 the U.S. Army Signal Corps sent 223 women to France to help win World War I. Elizabeth Cobbs reveals the challenges these patriotic young women faced in a war zone where male soldiers resented, wooed, mocked, saluted, and ultimately celebrated them. Back on the home front, they fought the...

20

The hundred-year walk : an Armenian odyssey
MacKeen, Dawn Anahid
Paper Book
An epic tale of one man's courage in the face of genocide and his granddaughter's quest to tell his story In the heart of the Ottoman Empire as World War I rages, Stepan Miskjian's world becomes undone. He is separated from his family as they are swept up in...

21

March 1917 : on the brink of war and revolution
Englund, Will
Paper Book
"We are provincials no longer," declared Woodrow Wilson on March 5, 1917, at his second inauguration. He spoke on the eve of America's entrance into World War I, just as Russia teetered between autocracy and democracy. In the face of chaos and turmoil in Europe, Wilson was determined to move...

22

Marked for death : the first war in the air
Hamilton-Paterson, James
Paper Book
A dramatic and fascinating account of aerial combat during World War I, revealing the terrible risks taken by the men who fought and died in the world's first war in the air. Little more than ten years after the first powered flight, aircraft were pressed into service in World...

23

The Oxford illustrated history of the first World War
Strachan, Hew
Paper Book
The First World War, now a century ago, still shapes the world in which we live, and its legacy lives on, in poetry, in prose, in collective memory and political culture. By the time the war ended in 1918, millions lay dead. Three major empires lay shattered by defeat, those of Germany, Austria...

24

The road less traveled : the secret battle to end the Great War, 1916-1917
Zelikow, Philip
Paper Book
This revealing historical examination looks at the pivotal few months in the middle of the First World War, when all sides--Germany, Britain, and America--believed the war could have been concluded and changed the course of history.​ Two years into the most terrible conflict...

25

Secret warriors : the spies, scientists and code breakers of World War I
Downing, Taylor
Paper Book
World War I is often viewed as a war fought by armies of millions living and fighting in trenches, aided by brutal machinery that cost the lives of many. But behind all of this an intellectual war was also being fought between engineers, chemists, code-breakers, physicists, doctors, mathematicians,...

26

The sunken gold : a story of World War I espionage and the greatest treasure salvage in history
Williams, Joseph A.
Paper Book
On January 25, 1917, HMS Laurentic struck two German mines off the coast of Ireland and sank. The ship was carrying 44 tons of gold bullion to the still-neutral United States via Canada in order to finance the war effort for Britain and its allies. Britain desperately needed that sunken...

27

Tales from the borderlands : making and unmaking the Galician past
Bartov, Omer
Paper Book
The story of the diverse communities of Eastern Europe's borderlands in the centuries prior to World War II   "A powerful combination of history and personal memoir. . . . A richly contextual, skillfully woven historical study."--Kirkus Reviews (starred...

28

To hell and back : Europe, 1914-1949
Kershaw, Ian
Paper Book
"Chilling... To Hell and Back should be required reading in every chancellery, every editorial cockpit and every place where peevish Euroskeptics do their thinking.... Kershaw documents each and every 'ism' of his analysis with extraordinary detail and passionate humanism."--...

29

The trigger : hunting the assassin who brought the world to war
Butcher, Tim
Paper Book
On a summer morning in Sarajevo almost a hundred years ago, a teenager took a pistol out of his pocket and fired not just the opening rounds of the First World War but the starting gun for modern history. By killing Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Gavrilo...

30

The unknowns : the untold story of America's unknown soldier and WWI's most decorated heroes who brought him home
O'Donnell, Patrick K.
Paper Book
The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is sacred ground at Arlington National Cemetery. Originally constructed in 1921 to hold one of the thousands of unidentified American soldiers lost in World War I, it now also contains unknowns from World War II and the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and receives millions...

31

The unsubstantial air : American fliers in the First World War
Hynes, Samuel
Paper Book
The Unsubstantial Air is the gripping story of the Americans who fought and died in the aerial battles of World War I. Much more than a traditional military history, it is an account of the excitement of becoming a pilot and flying in combat over the Western Front, told through the words...

32

The vanquished : why the First World War failed to end
Gerwarth, Robert
Paper Book
Winner of the Tomlinson Book Prize A Times Literary Supplement Best Book of 2016 An epic, groundbreaking account of the ethnic and state violence that followed the end of World War I--conflicts that would shape the course of the twentieth century.

33

War against war : the American fight for peace, 1914-1918
Kazin, Michael
Paper Book
The untold story of the movement that came close to keeping the United States out of the First World War. This book is about the Americans who tried to stop their nation from fighting in one of history's most destructive wars and then were hounded by the government when they refused to...

34

Wasteland : the Great War and the origins of modern horror
Poole, W. Scott
Paper Book
Historian and Bram Stoker Award Nominee W. Scott Poole traces the confluence of military history, technology, and art that gave us modern horror films and literature. From Nosferatu to Frankenstein's monster, from Fritz Lang to James Whale, the touchstones of horror can all trace...

35

The world remade : America in World War I
Meyer, G. J.
Paper Book
An indispensable, sharply drawn account of America's pivotal-and still controversial-intervention in World War I, enlivened by fresh insights into the key issues, events, and personalities of the period, from the New York Times bestselling author of A World Undone

36

A world undone : the story of the Great War, 1914-1918
Meyer, G. J.
Paper Book
The First World War is one of history’s greatest tragedies. In this remarkable and intimate account, author G. J. Meyer draws on exhaustive research to bring to life the story of how the Great War reduced Europe’s mightiest empires to rubble, killed twenty million people, and cracked the...

37

World War I : the definitive visual history : from Sarajevo to Versailles
Grant, R. G.
Paper Book
Between 1914 and 1918, a conflict on an epic scale left an indelible mark on the memory of the world - World War I. World War I: The Definitive Visual History takes you from the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand to the Treaty of Versailles. Experience some of...

38

Wounded : a new history of the Western Front in World War I
Mayhew, E. R.
Paper Book
The number of soldiers wounded in World War I is, in itself, devastating: over 21 million military wounded, and nearly 10 million killed. On the battlefield, the injuries were shocking, unlike anything those in the medical field had ever witnessed. The bullets hit fast and hard, went deep and took...

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