The First World War

by John Keegan

Book Overview

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - The definitive account of the Great War from one of our most eminent military historians. Elegantly written, clear, detailed, and omniscient.... Keegan is...perhaps the best military historian of our day. --The New York Times Book Review

The First World War created the modern world. A conflict of unprecedented ferocity, it abruptly ended the relative peace and prosperity of the Victorian era, unleashing...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375700455
• ISBN13: 9780375700453
• Release Date: May 2000
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 528 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Best single volume WW1 book

I am a very keen reader on the WW1 as my grand father fought for Canada. This is by far the best single volume overall account of the war.

Outstanding Survey of the Great War

Keegan has written an outstanding single-volume survey of the war. As such, it isn't all going to fit, and he doesn't try. No chapters on Versailles, no attempt to describe every battle or campaign. If you want to read about Rommel in Italy, read _Attacks_ (though he does get a mention...). Keegan's forte in this book is capturing the sweep of the war, illustrating it with key events, and moving you on. He's trying to get you to undertand how 1916 differed from 1915, not give you a comprehensive list of everything that happened that year. I have only two minor points of dissatisfaction, which is pretty impressive for a book of this scale. The first is an inadequate treatment of the economic strangulation of Germany. I don't quibble with most of the topics he chose not to cover, but Germany's inability to feed itself and its inability to exploit its gains in the East go to the heart of its loss of the war - it deserves some expanded discussion. My second complaint is one of presentation. Any survey of a long war is going to cover many battles, and one needs maps to understand how they developed as they did. Maps are few, far between, and inadequate in this volume, and the loss is felt keenly. Those two complaints aside, I can't think of a better single-volume introduction to the war, and its exploration of themes suits it nicely to a survey course.

Good breadth, touching on all theatres of the war

World War I may have been the most important war in history, certainly the most of the last three to four hundred years. Old political systems were destroyed and new ones created, entirely new forms of warfare were introduced, etc. Thus, a great many books have been written on the subject. John Keegan is well known to military historians, and in fact most armchair historians as well, and has applied his keen mind and easy-to-read style to this event with his usual high standards.What I most like about this book is its breadth. Instead of the standard cursory lip-service to the secondary theatres of operation, the entire war is covered, including Turkey's battles in Egypt and the Caucuses, Rumania's beating, and the Austro-Italian conflict. He also covers the major battles, of course, including Verdun, Tannenburg, Arras, etc.The first hundred pages or so are not up to the standard of the rest of the book - here the cursory overview is detrimental, especially when compared to Tuchman's Guns of August, for instance. However, once the war starts, it is an excellent read. Keegan chooses to focus on the strategic direction of the war, sacrificing some tactical and political detail as a result. This is an advantage, in my opinion - the narrative moves quickly and is more readable as a result. Some have complained about the lack of maps. I found the number adequate, if not always well placed. Most of the time, place names and details of battles are not important, especially in the Western Front - same battle, different place is the common theme. Having said that, it is a little annoying when towns are specifically mentioned in the text but not placed on the corresponding map.Overall, an excellent look at the First World War. Highly recommended if you are interested in the course of the war itself rather than its underlying causes or repercussions.

A readable text book!

Keegan does it well! This book illuminates the war to end all wars and captures the sweep of the first global conflict. Keegan details the primary causes and the primary instigators of the conflict. You really come to understand how about 15 individuals and a lot of national pride led to the deaths of millions. While not a truly "modern" war, many of the instruments of death were well hoaned (e.g. the rifle, the machine gun and artillery). This book describes the horror of trench warfare, details the attacks and defenses, the general's attempts to break the stalemate, the mathematics of attrition, the political motivations, and most importantly, the effect on nations that established the groundwork for the second world war. No modern history, military history, or the 20th century history collection is complete with out a text such as this! Keegans book is dense and detailed, well researched, and yet understandable and a pleasure to read!

Keegan's Formidable Skills are Focused on World War One!

The most wonderful aspect of John Keegan's impeccable writing style is that it is always used in service to the telling the story at hand, in this case the story of the First World War. As Keegan argues, the combinaion of influences and social and economic forces leading to the outbreak of the First World War demark the embarkation point for the onset of the modern world, so understanding the forces at work in causing it, and in fueling its progress and conflagration against all logic, rationality and useful purpose, are critical in attempting to understand the 20th century.World War One was clearly, from its onset, a war quite unlike all those that had proceeded it. It was conducted with a intensity and ferocity unprecedented in the modern world, largely due to the introduction of the large-scale use of mechanized implements of war such as the relative wealth of the nations involved, the more robust health of its average citizens (due to improved sanitation, food supplies, and public health), and the implementation of weapons such as tanks and machine guns. This, then, really is a definitive history of the the First Word War. Keegan's forte, of course, is in describing and explaining the nature of the military conflict itself. This he does with precision and a sense of the sweeping panorama on which this war is being waged. Thus, there are descriptions of activiteis in places as far flung as Verdun and Gallipoli, and we watch with a mixture of amazement and horror as we see the murderous stalemate develops along the relatively stable battle-lines of the fields and forests of the Somme. He also helps to shed new light on the conduct of the hostilities in terms of the tactics employed and the way in which the new technolgies were so savagely employed. As always, Keegan draws out our innate interest in the individual personalities contributing to the development of the war crisis, and then in directing and conducting the war, and makes us better appreciate how their personalities and frailties lead each of them into the kinds of tragic actions that doom so many to death. For years the daily "Butcher's Bill" was extracted as wave after wave of infantry were slaughted with machine guns, mortors, and artillery, and for little or no substantive gain for either side in terms of miltary advantage. The new war was a more horrible war from the average citizen's point of view, and Keegan underscores this, as well. Of course, Keegan points this out at a number of points quite poignantly; it is the anonymous millions who lived and died in the trenchs so bravely and yet so uselessly that deserve our compassion. This, then, is an interesting, well-documented, absorbing, and worthwhile book and is definitely one any serious student of modern war and the 20th century will want to read and have in his or her library.