World War I Centenary: The war, the books about the war, and a place to discuss them all...

As probably most of us are already aware -- and those who aren't within a month or two probably are living in a cave somewhere! -- 2014 will mark the 100th anniversary of World War I; the Great War; the war that was supposed to end all wars.

Clearly, it didn't -- instead, the war and its consequences reshaped the world we inhabit today, and sowed the seeds for countless conflicts to come. The Second World War is simply the most dramatic; perhaps the longest-running is the conflict in the Middle East, where the imperatives of imperial powers during WW1 generated promises that led to conflict in later years, such as the Balfour Declaration. Anti-colonial conflict that ran from the 1920s to the 1960s can be traced to Woodrow Wilson's attempt to insist on self-determination of peoples, and the ways in which that was honored more in the breach than in the observance in the Treaty of Versailles.

The war brought about a transformation of political order, with former mavericks and gadflies suddenly appealing to a wider audience and becoming more mainstream. (I'm thinking of the likes of George Bernard Shaw, here.) It made enemies of old friends -- Sir Roger Casement, knighted for his services to humanity in exposing the evils of the colonial regime in the Belgian Congo, was hung as a traitor for his role in the 1916 uprising in Ireland, which had German support. It made friends of old enemies, as suffragettes who had starved themselves to put pressure on the government to permit women to vote, enlisted in the war effort. Social roles -- for the "lower classes", for women -- would never be the same. The horrors of trench warfare left survivors with a lasting sense of disillusion and existential angst. Atonal music, abstract painting -- the art of the absurd -- became the new new things. Jazz, flappers, cocktails -- whatever it took to banish the horrors of those years was eagerly embraced.

So, for those of us whose 2014 reading plans involve delving more deeply into the war's causes, the war itself, its aftermath and legacy, here's a place to come to look for reading ideas, discuss what it is that you're reading (fiction and non-fiction alike; light or heavy) and swap ideas and thoughts and recommendations. Suggest some books for others to read; tell us what intrigues you most about the era and what you hope to accomplish.

I'll reserve the next two posts for lists of books -- fiction and non-fiction -- recommended by anyone who wants to. If I'm not active enough about updating 'em, prod me via PM. Please let me know if you can think of any other sub-categories.

World War One: The Non-Fiction History

The name of the person suggesting the book will be given in brackets following it; if the person is recommending it strongly, I'll mark it with a star. If more than one person recommends it, I'll add all the names, so folks will be able to get a sense of how widely recommended a book is.

The runup to war:

1913: the Year Before the Storm by Florian Iles (Chatterbox)
Thunder at Twilight by Frederic Morton (Chatterbox)
*The Vertigo Years by Philipp Blom (Chatterbox)
*The Proud Tower by Barbara Tuchman ) (Chatterbox)
The Perfect Summer by Juliet Nicholson (Chatterbox,michigantrumpet)

Causes and triggers:

*The War that Ended Peace by Margaret MacMillan (Chatterbox)
The Assassination of the Archduke by Greg King (Chatterbox)
One Morning in Sarajevo by David James Smith (Chatterbox)
*The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 by Christopher Clark (Chatterbox,scvlad)
Catastrophe 1914 by Max Hastings (Chatterbox)
Europe's Last Summer by David Fromkin (Chatterbox)

The war: military histories

To the Last Man: Spring 1918 by Lyn MacDonald (Chatterbox)
*They Called it Passchendaele by Lyn MacDonald (Chatterbox, Helenliz)
*The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman (Chatterbox, alco621,michigantrumpet)
The Great War: A Combat History by Peter Hart (Chatterbox)
Somme by Lyn MacDonald (Chatterbox)
Vimy by Pierre Berton (Chatterbox)
Verdun: The lost History of the Most Important Battle of World War 1 by John Mosier (Chatterbox)
Eye-deep in Hell by John Ellis (Chatterbox)
The Donkeys by Alan Clark (PaulCranswick)
The Price of Glory by Alistair Horne (alco621)
First Day on the Somme by Martin Middlebrook (Polaris)
*The first World War in the Air by Phil Carradice (Library Journal)
* The Real War 1914-1918 by Basil Liddell Hart (Library Journal; one of the first comprehensive histories, pub. 1930)
Gas! Gas! Quick Boys! by Michael Freemantle (Library Journal)
*Verdun: The Longest Battle of the Great War by Paul Jankowski (Library Journal)
To Conquer Hell: the Meuse-Argonne, 1918 by Edward Lengel (Library Journal)
Hundred Days: The Campaign that Ended World War I by Nick Lloyd (Library Journal)
*Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany and the Winning of the Great War at Sea by Robert Massie (Library Journal, Chatterbox)
*Three Armies on the Somme by William Philpot (library Journal)
Pyrrhic Victory: French Strategy and Operations in the Great War by Robert Doughty (Library Journal)
The AEF Way of War by Mark Grotelueschen (Library Journal)
The First World War: Germany and Austria Hungary, 1914-1918 by Holger Herwig (Library Journal)
World War I A Compact History by Grace Hayes (alco261)
The Somme by Peter Hart (RBeffa)
The Marne, 1914 by Holger Herwig (magicians_nephew)
With Our Backs to the Wall by David Stevenson
Tannenberg: Clash of Empires by Dennis Showalter
The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front by Mark Thompson
In Flanders Fields by Leon Wolff

The war: overall chronicles/histories

A World Undone by G.J. Meyer (Chatterbox)
The Pity of War by Niall Ferguson (Chatterbox)
World War One: A Short History by Norman Stone (Chatterbox)
The Last Great War: British Society and the First World War by Adrian Gregory (Chatterbox)
*The First World War by John Keegan (Chatterbox, PaulCranswick, Library Journal)
The First World War by Hew Strachan (Chatterbox)
The First World War by Michael Gilbert (Chatterbox)
The Beauty and the Sorrow by Peter Englund (Chatterbox)
The First World War and its Aftermath by AJP Taylor (PaulCranswick)
Wounded: A New History of the Western Front in World War I by Emily Mayhew (Library Journal)
The Oxford Illustrated History of the First World War edited by Hew Strachan (Library Journal)
World War I Companion edited by Mathias Strohn

The war: the civilian/social/cultural experience

*The Great War and Modern Memory by Paul Fussell (Chatterbox)
*To End All Wars by Adam Hochschild (Chatterbox)
Roses of No Man's Land by Lyn MacDonald (Chatterbox)
*Rites of Spring by Modris Ekstein (Chatterbox)
Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915
Nurses at the Front: Writing the Wounds of the Great War by Margaret Higonnet (Chatterbox)
Elsie and Mairi Go To War: Two Extraordinary Women on the Western Front by Diane Atkinson (Chatterbox)
Fighting on the Home Front by Kate Adie (Chatterbox)
The Red Sweet Wine of Youth: The Brave and Brief Lives of the War Poets by Nicholas Murray

The war: people, places, events.

Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence (Chatterbox,RBeffa,PaulCranswick)
*Lawrence in Arabia by Scott Anderson (Chatterbox)
The Last of the Doughboys by Richard Rubin (Chatterbox)
The Final Whistle by Arthur Ellis
The Monocled Mutineer by William Allison (PaulCranswick)
A Fine Brother: The Life of Captain Flora Sandes by Louise Millar (Chatterbox)
Guerilla: Colonel von Lettow-Vorbeck and Germany's East African Empire by Edwin Hoyt (alco261)
Mimi and Toutou's Big Adventure by Giles Foden (alco261)
Tolkien and the Great War by John Garth (gennyT)
Silent Night: The story of the World War I Christmas Truce by Stanley Weintraub (brenzi)
Red Baron by Manfred von Richthofen (RBeffa)
Sergeant York: American Hero by David D. Lee (cbl_tn)
A Fraternity of Arms: America and France in the Great War by Robert Bruce (Library Journal)
Imperial Germany and the Great War by Roger Chickering (Library Journal)
Eden to Armageddon: World War I in the Middle East by Roger Ford (Library Journal)
Gallipoli by Alan Moorehead (PaulCranswick)
Wilson by A. Scott Berg (michigantrumpet)
Sergeant York: His Own Life Story and War Diary (cbl_tn)
Sergeant York and the Great War: His Own Life Story and War Diary (edited) (cbl_tn)

The war: politics and espionage

*The Zimmerman Telegram by Barbara Tuchman (Chatterbox, cbl_tn, maggie1944)
*To End All Wars by Adam Hochschild (Chatterbox)
Femme Fatale: A new Biography of Mata Hari by Pat Shipman (Chatterbox)
Dark Invasion: 1915: Germany's Secret War and the Hunt for the First Terrorist Cell in America (Chatterbox) (Pub date Feb 11, 2014)

The war: official histories & reference

Canadian Expeditionary Force 1914-1919
Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918
Official History of New Zealand in the First World War
The Routledge Atlas of the First World War, by Michael Gilbert

The war: memoirs, journals and letters

*Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain (Chatterbox, cushlareads, Helenliz)
Chronicle of Youth by Vera Brittain (Chatterbox)
Fighting France by Edith Wharton
Four Weeks in the Trenches by Fritz Kreisler
Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves
Undertones of War by Edmund Blunden
War Memoirs by David Lloyd George (Paul Cranswick)
The World Crisis 1911-1918 by Winston Churchill (PaulCranswick)
Diary without Dates by Enid Bagnold (Chatterbox, LizzieD)
The Forbidden Zone by Mary Borden (Chatterbox)
*Sagittarius Rising by Cecil Lewis (alco621)
Make the Kaiser Dance by Henri Berry et al (anthology) (alco621)
Somme Mud by EPF Lynch (avatiakh)
Liaison 1914 by Edward Spears (Nandadevi)
Gallipoli Memories by Compton McKenzie (Nandadevi)
*Winged Victory by V.M. Yeates (RBeffa)
Life, Death and Growing Up on the Western Front by Anthony Fletcher (collected letters in context) (Library Journal)
Voices from the Great War by Vanstittart (Chatterbox)
Because You Died by Vera Brittain (gennyt)
To the Last Salute: Memories of an Austrian U-Boat Commander by Georg von Trapp (yes, Sound of Music von Trapp) (cbl_tn)

Peace and the Versailles Treaty

*Paris 1919 by Margaret MacMillan (Chatterbox,KatieKrug,cushlareads)
A Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today by David Andelman (inge87)

Consequences/Legacy

A Stillness Heard Round the World by Stanley Weintraub (alco261)
*The Missing of the Somme by Geoff Dyer (Chatterbox)
Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning by Jay Winter (Chatterbox)
Rising Above the Ruins in France by Corinna Haven Putnam (Chatterbox)
The Great Silence by Juliet Nicholson (Chatterbox)
The Unending Vigil by Phillip Longworth (Chatterbox
*Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age by Modris Ekstein (Chatterbox)
Lost Battalions: The Great War and the Crisis of American Nationality by Richard Slotkin (Library Journal)
Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy by David Cannadine (michigantrumpet)

Offbeat

Back to the Front by Stephen O'Shea (Chatterbox)

World War One: Fiction

Contemporary Accounts:

"War Poets":

the Penguin Book of First World War Poetry
In Parenthesis by David Jones (PaulCranswick, KatieKrug)
World War One British Poets: Brooke, Owen, Sassoon, Rosenberg and Others (ed. Candace Ward) (Chatterbox)
War Poems of Wilfred Owen
The Poetical Works of Rupert Brooke
Rupert Brooke & Wilfred Owen (Everyman's Poetry Series)
The Collected Poems of Isaac Rosenberg
The Oxford Book of War Poetry, ed. Jon Stallworthy
Out of Battle: the Poetry of the Great War
Collected Poems, 1908-1956 by Siegfried Sassoon
Scars Upon My Heart: Women's Poetry and Verse of the First World War ed. Catherine Reilly
Never Such Innocence: Poems of the First World War ed., Martin Stephen
First World War Poems, ed. Andrew Motion
The Poems of Edmund Blunden 1914-1930
Collected Poems by Ivor Gurney
Collected Poems of Robert Graves
The Poems and Plays of Isaac Rosenberg
The Annotated Collected Poems by Edward Thomas (although he didn't write while in the trenches; you want to look for his "War Diary"
Collected Poems by Edward Thomas
The Complete Poems of Richard Aldington

Novels and stories by survivors and their peers:
(includes autobiographical novels)

The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West (Chatterbox)
*All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque (Chatterbox, PaulCranswick, Helenliz)
Under Fire by Henri Barbusse (Chatterbox, PaulCranswick)
Memoirs of an Infantry Officer by Siegfried Sassoon (Chatterbox, Paul Cranswick) (Part of the Sherston Trilogy)
Death of a Hero by Richard Aldington (Chatterbox, PaulCranswick)
Her Privates We by Frederic Manning (Chatterbox)
The Good Soldier Svejk by Jaroslav Hasek (Chatterbox, PaulCranswick)
The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth (Chatterbox, KatieKrug, inge87)
Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos (Paul Cranswick, KatieKrug)
Parade's End by Ford Madox Ford (PaulCranswick)
World's End by Upton Sinclair (PaulCranswick)
The Enormous Room by e.e. cummings
One of Ours by Willa Cather (LizzieD)
The Happy Foreigner by Enid Bagnold (LizzieD)
We Were That Young by Irene Rathbone (LizzieD)
Not So Quiet by Helen Zenna Smith (LizzieD)
Non-combatants and others by Rose Macaulay (LizzieD)
The War workers by E.M. Delafield
Mr. Britling Sees it Through by HG Wells (LizzieD)
Falcons of France by Charles Nordhoff (alco621)
William: An Englishman by Cicely Hamilton (KatieKrug)
*Company K by William March (inge87, Library Journal)
My Brother's War by David Hill (avatiakh)
The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall (DorsVenabili)
Paths of Glory by Humphrey Cobb (Library Journal
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse by Vicente Blasco Ibanez

Literary fiction:

*Daughters of Mars by Thomas Keneally (Chatterbox)
The Wars by Timothy Findley (Chatterbox)
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway (RBeffa, PaulCranswick)
*Regeneration by Pat Barker (Chatterbox, RBeffa, KatieKrug)
The Eye in the Door by Pat Barker
The Ghost Road by Pat Barker
*Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden (Chatterbox, RBeffa, JenMDB)
A Soldier of the Great War by Mark Helprin (RBeffa)
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks (Chatterbox, Paul Cranswick, JenMDB)
A Long, Long Way by Sebastian Barry (PaulCranswick, KatieKrug)
Gossip from the Forest by Thomas Keneally (PaulCranswick)
Land of Marvels by Barry Unsworth (PaulCranswick)
Zennor in Darkness by Helen Dunmore (Chatterbox, LizzieD, KatieKrug)
By a Slow River by Philippe Claudel (KatieKrug)
The Absolutist by John Boyne (KatieKrug, Chatterbox)
They Were Counted by Miklos Banffy (KatieKrug, inge87)
The Stone Carvers by Jane Urquhart (JenMDB, Chatterbox)
August 1914 by Alexander Solzhenitsyn (Nandadevi)
A Fable by William Faulkner (cbl_tn)

Popular fiction:

The Passing Bells by Phillip Rock (Chatterbox)
Fall of Giants by Ken Follett (RBeffa)
The Cartographer of No Man's Land by P.S. Duffy (Chatterbox)
The First Casualty by Ben Elton (Chatterbox, Helenliz)
*A Very Long Engagement by Sebastien Japrisot (Chatterbox, PaulCranswick, KatieKrug)
Sojurn by Andrew Krivak (Chatterbox, KatieKrug)
Dreamers of the Day by Mary Doria Russell (Chatterbox)
An Ice Cream War by William Boyd (PaulCranswick)
War Horse by Michael Morpurgo (PaulCranswick)
Fly Away Peter by David Malouf (PaulCranswick)
The Ways of the World by Robert Goddard
Stella Bain by Anita Shreve (Chatterbox)
Wake by Anna Hope (KatieKrug) -- PUB DATE FEB 2014
Blow on a Dead Man's Embers by Mari Strachan (KatieKrug)
Waiting for Sunrise by William Boyd (KatieKrug, Chatterbox)
Bright's Passage by Josh Ritter (KatieKrug)
Remembrance by Theresa Breslin (JenMDB) (YA title)
Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo (JenMDB) (YA title)
Billy Bishop Goes to War by John Gray (JenMDB) (play/drama)
Barbed Wire and Roses by Peter Yeldham
Deafening by Frances Itani (JenMDB, lachochstetler)
War Story by Derek Robinson (Polaris)
*Burden of Desire by Robert MacNeil (michigantrumpet
In Falling Snow by Mary-Rose MacColl (countrylife)

Women's novels/Romantic fiction:

*Flowers of the Field by Sarah Harrison (Chatterbox)
The Two Mrs. Abbotts by D.E. Stevenson
The Ambassador's Daughter by Pam Jenoff
Night Shall Overtake Us by Kate Saunders
Fields of Yesterday by Robert Tyler Stevens
Escape from Bucharest by Robert Tyler Stevens
My Dear, I wanted to Tell You by Louisa Young (KatieKrug)
Overseas by Beatriz Williams
The Light Heart by Elswyth Thane (JenMDB)
Lives We Leave Behind by Maxine Alterio (JenMDB)

Mysteries/Espionage/Thrillers:

Ashenden by W. Somerset Maugham (Chatterbox, PaulCranswick)
The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan (cbl_tn)
Mr Standfast by John Buchan (cbl_tn)
Greenmantle by John Buchan (cbl_tn)
The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers
No Graves as Yet by Anne Perry (RBeffa)
Shoulder the Sky by Anne Perry
At Some Disputed Barricade by Anne Perry
We Shall Not Weep by Anne Perry
Angels in the Gloom by Anne Perry
The Return of Captain John Emmett by Elizabeth Speller (Chatterbox)
An Unmarked Grave by Charles Todd (and later mysteries in the 'Bess Crawford' series)
The Walnut Tree by Charles Todd (Chatterbox)
Into Battle by Michael Gilbert (Chatterbox)
Over and Out by Michael Gilbert (Chatterbox)
Dead Man's Land by Robert Ryan (Chatterbox)
At Break of Day by Elizabeth Speller (Chatterbox)
Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear (cbl_tn)
Birds of a Feather by Jacqueline Winspear (cbl_tn)
Pardonable Lies by Jacqueline Winspear (cbl_tn)
The Mapping of Love and Death by Jacqueline Winspear (cbl_tn)
A Test of Wills by Charles Todd
The Poison Tide by Andrew Wilson by Andrew Williams (PaulCranswick)

Cross posting this from my own thread, to explain why this interests me:

The reason this all interests me so much is that in my teens I spent a couple of summers working as a tour guide at Vimy Ridge. At the time, we lived in Brussels, and Vimy was about a three hour drive south, in the Pas de Calais region of France. I lived in a tiny room in the youth hostel in Arras, and cycled to and from work every day. I got one day off a week, and one summer I hoarded those so that I could take three or four full days off together and go to Paris. (that summer I got so tired that I actually managed to rear-end a car on the motorway). It was an incredibly formative experience. The first summer I did this I was 16, and living on my own in a youth hostel with people coming and going from all over the world, responsible for making my own meals, getting myself to and from work on time (11 km each way -- about 5 miles?) and doing the work -- taking tours through underground tunnels and trench systems. We essentially lived off the tips, which were quite generous. On a weekend, I could make 200 to 300 francs a day, at a time when the French franc was 5 to the dollar and a very nice dinner in the restaurant across the Grand Place in Arras (steak bearnaise avec frites! and a lovely cream of vegetable soup that I still recall) was only 35/40 francs. Then there was the history, and the fact that it was so visible. I had been studying the years leading up to and following WW1 in my IB contemporary history class, and suddenly I realized viscerally what it was about. As I began to read and study more, I also became convinced that the world we live in today has been shaped, if not determined, by this war and its outcome. If you think of one major political or social trend of the 20th century, it's hard to NOT trace it back in some way to WW1.

Right now, I'm particularly interested in reading more about the aftermath and consequences of the war.

I am glad to see this thread and you sound (from your experience) to be a perfect host/starter. I'll repost some thoughts from my own thread here. I am looking more at fiction responses to the war as I have read a fair amount of non-fiction in the past. But I'm open for everything. Here's my excerpt:

I have set aside a number of possibles and picked up a few extra books this past year with the war and times in mind. Some of them are Mark Helprin's "A Soldier of the Great War," Ken Follett's "Fall of Giants," Anne Perry's series that begins with "No Graves As Yet," Yeates' "Winged Victory," Joseph Boyden's "Three Day Road," and Faulks' "Birdsong." Maybe even Lawrence of Arabia's "Seven Pillars of Wisdom." There is of course no shortage of great books on and about and around the Great War.

I also mentioned thoughts of reading Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms".

Thank you!

Ron, thanks for the suggestions! I had completely forgotten about the Helprin novel; shame on me.

I'll probably get to the poetry tomorrow; it requires a bit more digging, once past anthologies.

Clearly there are gaps in what I've already posted, most notably in terms of conflict beyond the Western Front, or chronicles from the POV of the Central Powers.

I'd like to keep this limited to books that are directly relevant to the war. A book that is only about the Armenian genocide (vs one that is about Turkey in WW1 and deals with the genocide in that context) or one that is a biography of Lenin or the Tsar's family strike me as being related, but not within the scope of this thread. Yes, WW1 led to the Russian revolution, but that on its own is such a vast topic... Similarly, just because Winifred Holtby came of age during WW1 doesn't make all her novels relevant to someone trying read about the war via fiction. Some may be; others won't be. Robert Graves wrote about WW1 as well as poems about the war, but I, Claudius won't qualify here, IMHO. (OK, dramatic example, but you see what I'm saying...) The focus/plot/characters should be directly tied to the war, its causes or its aftermath.

Suz - I prepared a list on my own thread and you are of course at liberty to add any from my list that are not yet on yours. I'll be following this thread throughout the year, thanks for setting it up.

Two things, Suz. Members of the Virago group are planning to read VMCs and Virago authors who wrote about or during WWI. Here is the thread.
I don't know where it goes because I haven't started it yet, but among the first things I read in 2014 will be Into the Silence, subtitled The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest.

World War I and its aftermath are integral to Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs series, particularly the earlier books in the series.

I haven't read a lot of non-fiction about WWI, but I did read The Zimmerman Telegram a few months ago and learned a lot from it.

Carrie, yes to some of the Maisie Dobbs series, but not all of 'em. Even some of the earlier books, they are part of the back drop but it's more of a strain. I'll stick in the first one, though, as the main character's life certainly has been transformed by war, before the series begins.

Peggy, I've book-napped several titles; if you think any definitely should be added, please let me know!

Thanks for this, Suz! I really appreciate all the resources, especially the non-fiction ones. I've been struggling to find something that will give a good overview and not focus just on the battles and military stuff. I just ordered a copy of The Beauty and the Sorrow today.

I would second the recs for All Quiet on the Western Front, Birdsong, and Return of the Soldier, and I would add Bright's Passage by Josh Ritter to the fiction list - it's about an American soldier returned home after the war.

This is what I pulled off my shelves today:
Fiction
My Dear I Wanted to Tell You by Louisa Young
A Very Long Engagement by Sebastien Japrisot
Zennor in Darkness by Helen Dunmore
Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden
The Sojourn by Andrew Krivak
Life Class by Pat Barker
Regeneration by Pat Barker
By a Slow River by Philippe Claudel
A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry
The Absolutist by John Boyne
William An Englishman by Cicely Hamilton
Losing Julia by Jonathan Hull
In Parenthesis by David Jones
Wake by Anna Hope
Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos
A Test of Wills by Charles Todd
Blow on a Dead Man's Embers by Mari Strachan
The Radetzky March by Jospeh Roth
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West
Bereft by Chris Womersley
River of Darkness by Rennie Airth
Waiting for Sunrise by William Boyd
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

* Some of these may not be directly related to the war and a lot deal with the run-up to or with the aftermath but hopefully they will help put the whole picture together...

Non-fiction:
Paris 1919 by Margaret Macmillan
The Great War and Modern Memory by Paul Fussell
The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman

On my Kindle:
A Soldier of the Great War by Mark Helprin
The Daughters of Mars by Thomas Keneally
They Were Counted by Miklos Banffy
The Girl You Left Behind by Jojo Moyes

Planning to Purchase or Borrow:
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves
War Horse by Michael Morpurgo
Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain

Excellent, Katie -- thanks!! I'll add these tomorrow. I'm touchstone'd out for the day...

For the Maisie Dobbs series, I would argue that in addition to the first one, Birds of a Feather, Pardonable Lies, and The Mapping of Love and Death should also be included. I could go either way with Among the Mad since it deals with PTSD. Although Maisie is hired in the late 1920s/early 1930s, her investigations in those books require her to dig into things that happened during the war.

Excellent, Carrie; if you remember the details of which ones have plots that go back to a reasonable degree into the war's events, that would be great! I'm going to do something similar with the Charles Todd books featuring his main sleuth, Rutledge. His own war trauma is a theme throughout, but not all the plots pertain to WW1.

I think those are the main ones. After The Mapping of Love and Death the series starts to deal with the build-up to WWII.

I would second The Guns of August.
I would recommend Sagittarius Rising by Lewis which I consider to be the best memoir of World War I combat flying I've ever read.
I think The Price of Glory by Horne is an excellent a history of the year long battle of Verdun.
Another interesting book is Make the Kaiser Dance which is a collection of first person accounts of ground combat in WWI.

On the fiction front I'd recommend Falcons of France by Nordhoff and Hall - a story of the Lafayette Escadrille.

There are several books about World War I in Africa. Two of my favorites are Guerilla by Hoyt (which doesn't seem to want to come up on touchstones) and Mimi and Toutou's Big Adventure. The first is about Von Lettrow Vorbeck's campaign in German East Africa and the second is the true story about the battle of lake Tanganyika.

As for the aftermath A Stillness Heard Round the World is a good read.

Oh, Wow! Jeepers (an old, perhaps WW1 era expression)! This is a huge room with many, many shelves. I do not know for sure what I'll read but I think I'll need to start with something at the beginning.

I've read Birdsong which I loved and it gave me a very personal feeling for the war's affect on people.

I also read The Zimmerman Telegraph with my real life book group and enjoyed it. I think I can, based on that, recommend Barbara W. Tuchman as an excellent writer, researcher, and very accessible to an average reader. She writes nonfiction as if it were an excellent novel.

War Horse also gives a very personal accounting of young man going to war although it is perhaps a little sweet and gentle as it was written for kids. It was very hard for me to imagine the war horse actually surviving the war. Movie was sweet, too.

Ah! now that I review the lists above I realize I have a copy of The Vertigo Years I was able to pick up on sale at a book store. I also think I have a Maisie Dobbs novel on either my Kindle or my Nook. As the real life book is probably packed and in storage, not to be seen until after February 1, I think I'll start with the Maisie Dobbs book.

Thank you for setting up this thread. And we're off......

I think the first three of John Buchan's Hannay novels would fit. The Thirty-Nine Steps is set during the weeks leading up to the start of the war, and Greenmantle and Mr. Standfast are set during the war.

Suz - this is a great idea for a thread.

I'm planning that this category will be the foundation of my category challenge with fourteen for the year. My TBR is probably sufficient already but I will add some more before the year is out definitely.

Planning to read Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 by Christopher Clark in January as it should set the scene nicely. The Guns of August is another definite for early in the year.

I bought The Somme: The Heroism and Horror of War by Martin Gilbert and one on the consequences of the aftermath The Great Silence by Juliet Nicolson today and will try to add to my options each visit to the stores.

I am headed to the flagship store of Half Price Books today (last day of their 20% off already discounted books sale!) and think I may head to the WWI section first thing... I could make this my whole year of reading quite easily, but that would be a "plan" and I AM NOT PLANNING THIS YEAR!

I'm loving this thread. When I get off the iPad I will go through my catalogue.. For now, just a massive recommendation from me of Testament of Youth. And another one of Paris 1919. I started Margaret MacMillan's new one that you've listed Suz today but it is going to take a while...

FYI, Barnes & Noble online (bn.com) has To End All Wars on clearance for under $5...

Set in Scotland, A Sound of Chariots is a YA book that deals with the aftermath of WWI from a child's point of view. Also set in Scotland in 1918 is Beyond the Blue by Andrea McPherson which brings to life the home front near the end of the Great War. This is the setting my dad was born into so it really resonates with me.

Forgot to mention Deborah Moggach's In the Dark - funny how the WWI books jump out at me once I sit and gaze at my bookshelves bathed in winter sunshine.

LibraryJournal had a feature on books about World War I a few months ago (here). My TBR pile grew quite a bit after reading it.

For January, I'll be reading The War that Ended Peace by Margaret MacMillan

Other WWI books I want to get to this year:
At Break of Day by Elizabeth Speller
Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War by Max Hastings
Company K by William March
In Parenthesis by David Jones
The Radetzky March by Jospeh Roth
A Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today by David Andelman
They Were Counted by Miklós Bánffy

Inge, that link doesn't seem to work? Clearly, I'm going to have to take a look at In Parenthesis...

I'll probably alternate novels and non-fiction.

>25 Chatterbox:, Thanks, I fixed it, so the link should be working now.

ETA: Besides The Return of Captain John Emmett, its sequel The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton also involves secrets left over from the war.

I'd also add Deafening by Frances Itani to literary fiction- I read it several years ago and quite enjoyed it.

That's a great link, Inge! I'll peruse that later.

#27 -- already there, and I've added your endorsement! It's under popular fiction -- if you think it belongs in another category, please holler.

I may try to reorder these autobiographically, within subcategories, either by title or author, to make them more searchable. I suppose author would make more sense.

Jennifer, that is a great link and reminded me that I have Paths of Glory on the shelves.

>28 Chatterbox:- sorry, somehow I missed it!

Another thumbs up for In Parenthesis here.

One non-fiction one that may be of interest to Tolkien fans:

Tolkien and the Great War - detailed account of how Tolkien and his close friends fared in the Somme or elsewhere, and reflections on how the experience influenced his writing.

I'm not going to read every NF account of the war but I want to get to a couple and I really loved Max Hastings WWII book Inferno: the World at War 1939-1945 so I'm leaning towards his new one Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War as well as The Great War and Modern Memory and Scott Anderson's Lawrence in Arabia and The Missing of the Somme all of which I own. I also have Stanley Weintraub's Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce which I have meant to read every Christmas for the last few years and never seem to get to it.

But if I read the Hastings book I don't know if I want to read Margaret MacMillan's new one too. What do you think Suzanne? Are they going to cover the same territory?

Also, I will second or third Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth which I read a couple of years ago and found it to be one of the most powerful books I've ever read.

great thread. Some of you might remember Peter, who was a 75er a few years back and read a lot of military history. He lived in Japan before moving back to Australia. Anyway I'll look up one of his old threads as he was recommending lots of interesting nonfiction.
The only one i remember straight off was somme mud a memoir by E.D. Lynch, this he said was one of the best Somme memoirs.

There has been a lot published in New Zealand and and Australia about the role of the ANZACs in the war and worth investigating. I've read lots of great YA fiction and non fiction on the subject and recommend David Hill's My Brother's War which is about a conscientious objector and his soldier brother.

Thanks for all the additional suggestions and endorsements! I'm trying to keep up and adding them all to the list above; if I miss any, please prod me.

Bonnie, the Hastings and MacMillan books may turn out to be complementary. I haven't read the former, so I can't really opine, but different historians emphasize different contributing factors, with some arguing that certain factors are more important than others and their peers making precisely the opposite case. I'd take a look at descriptions and reviews of both books and see what you think. You may still want to read both, but perhaps several months apart and with some others in between on different aspects of the war?

ETA: I'e just looked at the Hastings book, and it seems to be a military history; skimming the description makes me think it's more like Barabara Tuchman's The Guns of August.

Thanks to the suggestions, I've added some more books to my own possible reading list!

-- Tolkien and the Great War
-- on causes, either Hastings or Christopher Clark's Sleepwalkers
-- A World Undone by G.J. Meyer
-- Mimi and Toutou's Big Adventure which not only is by the novelist Giles Foden, but explores the true story behind "The African Queen"
-- Fighting on the Home Front: The Legacy of Women in World War One by Kate Adie

I know I have a copy of The Happy Foreigner Around somewhere; it's just a matter of locating it.
-- An Ice Cream War by William Boyd, which is on my Kindle
-- Gossip from the Forest by Thomas Keneally
-- Wake by Anna Hope is a possibility, depending on availability/reviews when it's published.

All these on top of the 30 or so that are already on the list I've posted on my thread. Gulp.

On the Hastings or MacMillan perspective I think Suz is right in that Hastings is primarily a military historian albeit an excellent one, and the bias will be a martial one. Annbury writes a good review on the workpage of MacMillan's book in which she relates that she is excellent in sketching the characters involved in the events and in drawing conclusions as to the inevitability or not of the conflict.
Both look winners.

There is also The Sleepwalkers which I am starting tomorrow and which has been criticised in some parts for being too pro German and too anti-Russian/Serbian. Then there is Tuchman.

I want to read all of them this year if my stamina holds out because it really is one of the most pivotal events in World History. The world would surely have been very different:

1 Would oil in Saudi have been discovered and exploited if Britain had not helped the Arabs overthrow the Ottoman empire?

2 Would the Holocaust and Hitler and Stalin have happened if Belgium had said "OK, march away with your jolly plan Herr Schlieffen" and the war sans GBR had finished quickly in Germany's favour? Would Russia and Germany still have monarchies?

3 Whither American hegemony had the above happened and the tremendous debts that riddled Europe not been incurred and the production drive to support the war not been a charge to industry in the USA?

4 Would America have remained isolationist? Would there have ever been a need to devise the atomic bomb?

How on earth anyone could find the study of history boring is beyond me.

"How on earth anyone could find the study of history boring is beyond me." Oh, me, too! I was just trying to think how old was I went I first dipped into a historical book? Probably eight or nine years old. And I've been reading about what people have done, and why they might be doing that, for all these years (60). And I'm delighted that there is a great big topic, about which I've not read enough, looming for me.

Great thread here - many thanks to you Chatterbox for setting it up. There are so many great titles already mentioned, and many here that I've been recently wishlisting.

On the non-fiction front I'd like to recommend The First Day on the Somme by Martin Middlebrook - a masterpiece of military history, it gives an in depth look at the background, build up, execution and aftermath of one of the war's major battles. It relies heavily on personal testimony and is extremely well researched and packed full of important detail.

As for fiction, one modestly titled novel that I found to be very well written is War Story by Derek Robinson. It's a tale of Royal Flying Corps men on and above the Western Front (actually at a similar time to the period just before, during, and after the 1916 Battle of the Somme) - lots of great detail, powerfully drawn characters, and a tale that really moved me. Some of the best passages of aviation writing I've read to boot.

I'll weigh in with a seconded recommendation for They Called it Passchendaele by Lyn MacDonald. Awful, funny, touching and terribly bleak.

Testament of youth was an interesting one, as I've read it twice with very different reaction. But I'd agree it is on the list of books that ought to be read.

All Quiet on the Western front gets another second as well.

And if you want something fiction try The First casualty by Ben Elton. It's a detective mystery set in the trenches. Raises some interesting questions about murder and state sanctioned murder (also known as battle) and why that difference should matter - but it does.

I'm reading a book on the Italian front, something I knew next to nothing about until recently. We did WWI as part of our history sylabus, so I knew a bit amount about the build up to war and the western front, but virtually nothing beyond that. So I was intrigued to watch a programme about avalanches where the presenter said that during WWI on the Italian front, both sides triggered avalanches as an offensive tactic. So i'm reading The White War by Mark Thompson about the war on the Italian front. The avalanches haven't been mentioned yet, but I'm only 1/3 of the way in. So I'll add it to the list, if only because, as I said, it's an arena that is overlooked.

Perhaps I'll finally read Regeneration. I also have Not So Quiet around here somewhere. Also, a significant chunk of The Well of Loneliness deals with female ambulance drivers in WWI. I read it last year and it's actually quite a gripping page turner.

A few thoughts....

Eastern Front - August 1914. (Fictionalised History) Solzhenitsyn's massive account of the Battle of Tannenburg in East Prussia, which resulted in a catastrophic defeat for the Russian army. Very well researched and surprisingly readable. Gives a good picture of the disarray of the Russian army and command, and flags some of the issues that led to the Russian Revolution in 1917.

Eastern Mediterranean - Gallipoli Memories. (Memoir) Compton McKenzie was most famous for his novel 'Whisky Galore', but like many writers of fiction he wrote about his own wartime experiences.

Western Front - Liaison 1914. (Memoir) Edward Spears was the British Liaison Officer posted inside the French Army headquarters during the first weeks of the war. He had a unique insight into the pressure the British and French were under, and how - despite considerable differences in temperament and tactics - they managed (just) to bring the German advance on Paris to a halt. Spears writes frankly about the failures in command and co-ordination. Interestingly, he played almost exactly the same role during the Fall of France in 1940, as Churchill's personal envoy to the collapsing French Government.

Western Front and Home (UK) Front - Complete Memoirs of George Sherston, containing Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, and Sherston's Progress. (Fiction) Siegfried Sassoon's classic fictionalised autobiography. A contemporary of Wilfred Owen and Robert Graves, Sassoon paints a picture of the privileged pre-war upper class background of many of the Officers in the British army, his experience in the trenches in France, and his eventual stand against the war. Sassoon was a significant WW1 poet, and his books have that same lyrical quality.

Some more thoughts....

The Official Histories sponsored by the Governments of the protagonists of WWI aren't usually seen as a 'good read'. We tend to dismiss them as incredibly dry and overstuffed with military jargon. The authors are often viewed as hopelessly compromised by their desire to paint their 'side' in the best possible light, and even more so by their acceptance without question of the 'official' line put forward by the Governments that paid their wages. On the other hand, you can detect a sense among some of these authors that they were 'writing for history' and creating a memorial to all those who had died. The proof is in the reading of course, and I can observe that the Canadian, Australian and New Zealand histories all confound those negative stereotypes. They are good reads, especially if you have Wikipedia and a good map handy, and are now available in pdf formats courtesy of their respective Governments:

Canada - Canadian Expeditionary Force 1914-1919. This is the one-volume history of the Canadian experience in France.

Australia - Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918. The first two volumes cover the campaign at Gallipoli (Turkey), the next four volumes describe the Australian involvement in France from 1916 to the end of the War. The remaining six volumes cover the air war, the navy, the campaign in Palestine, the campaign in New Guinea, the Home Front and a volume of photographs.

New Zealand - Official History of New Zealand in the First World War. This collection of pdf files includes the four volumes that comprise the 'Official History', and additionally many Unit histories.

The US and UK histories (as best I can tell) are not available (yet) as free downloads, although the US version (multi-volume) is available for a relatively small fee. I haven't read either the UK or the US histories and consequently can't make any observation about their readability.

Most of my WWI reading has been fiction that has already been mentioned by others but I have two non-fiction books I plan to read in 2014 World War One A Short History by Norman Stone and A Foreign Field by Ben Macintyre.

Fab additional suggestions -- I promise to get them all added to the "master list" within 24 hours, and if I don't, give me a kick.

ardachy, I'm also going to be reading the Norman Stone book (it's en route to me via the library's hold system right now). The Ben Macintyre book is the same, I think, is the book I've listed up there as The Englishman's Daughter, and it's quite good and certainly a fascinating tale.

Thanks for the suggestions of the official histories!

Now, in case this group can come up with some suggestions: I'm looking for accounts of the hospitals like the one in Sidcup, England, that were doing revolutionary work in reconstructive surgery during and immediately after WW1. Any thoughts??

I have this one on my shelf also: Red Baron (edition 2005)
by Manfred Von Richthofen can't get a touchstone right for this

Did my Winged Victory by V M Yeates make it to the list? I've only browsed it but it apparently is considered one of the best books on the WWI air war written from a pilot's perspective.

eta: This is a naval history book I read years ago and was fascinated by, the story of a german raider in WWI, The Last Corsair: The Story of the Emden

One book I'm thinking about reading this year is Sergeant York: An American Hero because of the local connection. (I live within 1 1/2 to 2 hours from Alvin York's home.) It may go beyond the scope of what you want to include here since I think it looks at his whole life and not just his wartime experiences. I thought I'd mention it, though, since he's one of the iconic figures among U.S. participants in the war.

I think this is now updated, including the Library Journal content, and I'll circle back and try to tidy up some of the touchstones later on.

RBeffa, I think "Winged Victory" was/is one of the pesky touchstones; it's now on the list & I'll touchstone-wrangle when I go back to it.

Another to add by Vera Brittain (I don't think it's been mentioned):
Because you Died: Poetry and Prose of the First World War and After. I've just bought this for a friend, can't vouch for it myself, but those who have already read her other works may like to explore. This contains some previously unpublished material. From a quick glance, some at least of the prose bits are about her experiences as a nurse during the war.

>46 Chatterbox: the touchstone title works for Winged Victory not Wings of Victory.

Cr*p. That's what happens when one is wrangling unmanageably long lists of books and similarly recalcitrant touchstones. Hopefully working now.

Genny, should I stick that in non-fiction or fiction?

I'm not sure, esp not having read it - the prose is non-fiction and I guess the poems are drawing on her personal experiences so although you've classed other poetry as fiction this collection may on balance fit more in non-fiction.

This is awesome! What a wonderful resource this thread will be. Thank you, Suz, for setting it up. I'm starting to make a list of things to add to the wishlist, but I'm going to try to just choose a handful.... ha!

Suz, you are doing a great job and it needn't be perfect. Having this thread where readers can suggest books and look over the many already mentioned is invaluable.

Thanks, Ron!

Does anyone else want to post the books that they're thinking of reading along these lines in January? Once we finish 'em, maybe we can post comments on our reading here as well as on our own threads.

My own list includes:

The Final Whistle -- it's about the experience of a group of Rugby players from "down under" during the Great War -- non-fiction.
At Break of Day -- this is the new novel by Elizabeth Speller, who has already written two rather good mysteries set in the immediate aftermath of the war and with some connection to wartime events.
The Beauty and the Sorrow by Peter Englund: I'm going to start reading this, although I suspect I won't finish until Feb. or March.
The First Casualty by Ben Elton has been kicking around here for years, I think, and it's time I read it.
Dead Man's Land by Robert Ryan is another new novel, this one a mystery featuring Dr. Watson (of Sherlock Holmes fame) on the Western Front.
Night Shall Overtake Us by Kate Saunders is more of a woman's novel/romantic novel about a group of young women who come of age during the war.
The Archduke's Assassination is a new book focusing on the immediate catalyst for war; the other book I've read about Sarajevo 1914 was very "meh".

If I add one more to this list, it will be either Gossip from the Forest (because I though Tom Keneally's Daughters of Mars was brilliant) or a new novel, Stella Bain by Anita Shreve.

So, that's where I'm starting off!

I added 6 more WW1 books to my TBR yesterday in a last minute, child induced (honestly) trip to the bookstore:

1. The Sojourn by Andrew Krivak
2. Gallipoli by Alan Moorehead
3. The Flowers of the Field by Sarah Harrison
4. A Soldier of the Great War by Mark Helprin
5. The War Poems by Siegfried Sassoon
6. The Poison Tide by Andrew Williams

I don't think the Moorehead or the Williams thriller have been mentioned as yet. Moorehead's work dates from the early 1950s and he was a celebrated war correspondent in his day.

I just realized I forgot to mention World War I A Compact History by Hayes. It's essentially a Cliff Notes/thumbnail sketch of the entire conflict and it might help you with respect to your choice of books when you are trying to decide which of the many you would like to read for more detail about any particular aspect of the war.

Added, Paul & "alco"! How pathetic is it that I saw in 2014 while updating lists of recommended WW1 reading??

It occurred to me I should look on my husband's shelves (no, we have not integrated our libraries!) as he is a history and military buff. Lo and behold, I found more goodies (mostly military stuff that I won't read straight through but that could be useful references):

The Great War at Sea: Naval Action 1914-1918 by A.A. Hoehling
Dreadnought by Robert K. Massie
The First World War by John Keegan
The Great War Generals on the Western Front by Robin Neillands

And two trips to local used bookstores netted me:
Unknown Soldiers: The Story of the Missing of the First World War by Neil Hanson
The First World War by Hew Strachan
World War One by Norman Stone
Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce by Stanley Weintraub
The Zimmerman Telegram by Barbara Tuchman
Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain

And I am planning to buy a copy of the new Macmillan book since it comes so highly recommended.

So I think with these, plus what I listed in #11, I am in good shape :-P

I have another suggestion, but it might be considered a bit "off topic". Not Forgotten by Neil Oliver is looking at the war memorials that sit in each village/town/city in the UK, with the names of the dead. Some of them are simply in alphabetical order, no names and ranks, others are in rank order. This looks at a few of them, at some of the names on the memorial and how they came to be erected after the war.
They're a ubiquitous sight, and we rarely look at them except on 11/1. Maybe we should look at them more often.

it's also interesting what the veterans themselves wanted. In my hometown, for example, there's a war memorial in the church, but the veterans didn't want an obelisk, so the money collected paid for the bus shelter in the square. You'd not know unless you read the inscription round the canopy. And where we currently live, the park in the centre of town is called Peace Park and was bought and given to the town council in 1920.

I should think that was very much 'on topic', Helenliz. How we commemorate, and whom, and why (and for how long) are part of the aftermath of war.

I'm going to aim for one book a month this year. Here's my tentative reading list:

World War One: History in an Hour by Rupert Colley
The First World War by John Keegan
George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I by Miranda Carter
The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman
The Remains of Company D by James Carl Nelson
Sergeant York: An American Hero by David D. Lee
Back to the Front by Stephen O'Shea
Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce by Stanley Weintraub
Greenmantle by John Buchan
Mr. Standfast by John Buchan
The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West
The Return of Captain John Emmett by Elizabeth Speller

Edited to correct touchstone and swap a title.

Excellent idea. I would simply recommend starring The Sleepwalkers. I thought it was a brilliant examination of events that triggered the war.

There's another Sgt York book out there that I read some years ago and thought excellent. I'm reasonably certain it was not the David Lee book. I am not recognizing it from these lists or a mild search on LT. I'll hunt a little more.

The other Sergeant York bio available in my library is Sgt. York: His Life, Legend & Legacy by John Perry. It's a longer book and comes from a religious publishing house. I'll probably read it at some point, but I decided to start with the shorter book from a university press.

It is possible that what I remember for Sgt York was a chapter in a book such as SLA Marshall's World War I or a profile in another. I'm thinking though now that it might have been York's own book that he wrote. I read it quite a few years ago (in the 80's). I don't think it is the Perry book.

May I add a second (or third) vote for The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman and The Perfect Summer by Juliet Nicolson?

Also, in Non-fiction:
Wilson by A. Scott Berg
The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy by David Cannadine

On the fiction side, I was quite taken by the novel Burden of Desire by Robert MacNeil (of MacNeil Lehrer fame) loosely based on a horrific military explosion in Halifax NS harbor. Incidentally, the City Boston still receives its official Christmas tree from the citizens of Halifax in thanks for the quick emergency aid rendered after that tragic event.

Edited to correct touchstones and correct my fumble fingered typing

I'm so glad you put up this thread. I've wanted to read (and learn) more about WW1 for a while now and this is so great. I'm kind of hoping this'll continue until 2018 (the centennial of the end of the war) because there are simply too many interesting books to read on the matter.

>66 PawsforThought:, Not to mention all the new stuff being published because of the centenary. Half my WWI to-read list seems to have been published in 2013, and the flood of new releases doesn't seem to be slowing down. ::groan::

Nor will it, I think, Inge! I'll update all this tomorrow, when the winter storm starts and my migraine stops. Happy 2014 to all!

One that might interest The Sound of Music fans is To the Last Salute: Memories of an Austrian U-Boat Commander by Georg von Trapp.

Another novel for the "Survivors and their peers" list:
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse by Vicente Blasco Ibanez

OK folks, I think I'm up to date again -- if anyone sees anything that hasn't been added, it's an oversight and not deliberate - just let me know! Should I add the additional Sgt York bio?

Sure - someone else might want to read it. There's also his memoir:
Sergeant York: His Own Life Story and War Diary
Sergeant York and the Great War: His Own Life Story and War Diary (edited version)

Those participating in Mark's American Literature challenge might want to read A Fable by William Faulkner next month.

I found one that I only vaguely remembered having and hadn't even catalogued.

The Somme by Peter Hart.

There are possibly two different versions of this. Mine is the one the touchstone goes to. It us from 2005. Hart has several other WWI books I see such as one on Jutland and an overall history.

Thanks for adding the York autobio

Note: In post 3, under mysteries - At Break of Day is the wrong touchstone.

Another to add: In Falling Snow by Mary-Rose MacColl. Historical fiction, women doctors who set up hospital at Royaumont Abbey in France.

Added, and I think updated.

I've just finished the ARC of the latest (due out in February) mystery from Charles Todd, Hunting Shadows. There are links via characters and plot twists to the war -- the mystery itself is set in 1920, and one of the victims had served on the Western Front, as had the shell-shocked Scotland Yard detective who investigates a series of crimes that may be the work of a despised group of combattants - the sniper.

That reminded me of Three Day Road, an excellent novel revolving around two childhood friends from the Cree or Ojibwe tribes in N. Ontario, both of whom end up as such "sharpshooters" for the Canadian forces in France; one of them is being taken home to his community, hence the journey of the title. Joseph Boyden is a superlative writer, IMHO.

Seems like all you need to do to sell a book is put "1914" in the title.

I've got the 1914: the War that ended Peace

and now there is The Marne,1914 which is pretty good and a little unorthodox about the causes and run-up to the battle and the war.

and how have we missed All Quiet on the Western Front???

And keeping fingers as placeholders in the indispensible works of John Keegan and Max Hastings

I always like reading the part where the taxicabs carry French soldiers to the battle; when I was in Paris in the 1970's my driver still talked about it.

Looking forward to touring the battlefields in all of your company.

All Quiet on the Western Front has been mentioned several times! Such an amazing work.

^I've put it on hold at the library, never having read it.

I'd say you were in for a treat, Ellen, but it's not that kind of book. It is, though, incredibly powerful.

Sadly, I am having some issues with my eyes, post cataract surgery, and have not been totally comfortable reading for a bit. Even the Kindle, the computer, and the Nook, have not helped overcome this. Real life books are sometimes OK, sometimes not. This morning I can not settle in to reading Death Comes For the Archbishop (Mark's Am Authors Challenge) so I decided I would try Audible. They don't have it, so I got The Guns of August. I don't know how I'm going to do with this Audible thing as I am habitually one who falls to sleep listening to the radio. We'll see.....

Off to listen now.

For fiction I would highly recommend the series by Anne Perry. I have read most of them and find them to be mystery/fiction that dares to ask the hard question - why? And how do we handle the dreadful news that a loved one has been killed?

Don't forget Redemption by Leon Uris. This book is about the IRA in Ireland during WWI but a huge chunk of it is about Gallipoli and the ANZAC troops. Also Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak.

For non-fiction I would also recommend Rickenbacker the auto-biography of Captain Eddie Rickenbacher the World War 1 flying ace from the U.S. I would also recommend Ataturk by Lord Kinross for a take on the Turkish side of the war and the aftermath in what was the Ottoman Empire. I believe that there is a newer biography of Ataturk published since this one, but this is the one I have read and I can recommend it. I found it fascinating.

There is also The Great Influenza about the pandemic that was probably a result of the war and started during the last years of the war.

I have read both Proud Tower and Guns of August and think they are outstanding works on the pre-war years and the first month of the war.

a book that is on my TBR list is Blizzard of Glass about the explosion in 1917 in the Halifax Harbor between a French freighter carrying high explosives and a Norwegian fishing ship that resulted in thousands of civilian deaths and mass blindness caused by flying glass shards.

Currently, I am reading a biography Coco Chanel: An Intimate Life and was surprised that so much of it was about World War I and live in Paris among the art crowd during those war years. Of course, its main focus is not WWI but the conduct of the war and the aftermath very much was part of fashion and art.

I'm about a third of the way through Tolkien and the Great War and so far, it's been pretty interesting. I had no idea that "fairy stories" played such a large role in the British wartime culture. I'm just now at the part where Tolkien joins up (he waited to enlist until after he had finished his degree), so we'll see how things hold up now that he's officially joined the war.

Benita, I'd like to keep the main lists, above, for books whose primary focus is the war, so perhaps not for the Chanel bio or The Great Influenza; its focus seems to have been on the disease rather than the war, with the war mentioned because army camps brought a lot of people together and facilitated the spread of the disease. We could create a third list, if people think it's appropriate, for books on topics that are indirectly linked to WW1 or where the war makes up a part of the action, such as the Russian Revolution? I may be mis-remembering Doctor Zhivago but my recollection is that its focus is on the Red/White civil war and the revolution?

Thoughts on adding a third list, folks?

Shall add the others later on this evening.

Inge, thanks for the followup on the Tolkien book! That looks very interesting. I have another on a wish list somewhere about Tolkien and the English landscape; they might be interesting to read together.

#84
The movie of Zhivago was centered on the Civil War, but fully half of the book is about WWI on the Eastern Front, but you are correct that the focus of the book is more on Russia and the Revolutions of the early part of the 20th century.

Yes, I read the book a long, long time ago (and took a long, long time to do it, since I was reading it in Russian). I know they emphasized the civil war at the expense of the Great War to play up the romance in the film. Would it be a "war novel", though?

Hmm, maybe the solution IS a third list. I'd probably put both the Leon Uris novel and Dream of the Celt by Mario Vargas Llosa in it, too. Along with The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian and Erevan by Gilbert Sinoue.

If you do start a third list, I think the novel The Gendarme deals with the Armenian genocide...?

I'll launch a third list when we bounce to a second thread -- that way I can break some of the very long lists up top into sub-groups by post, too. Right now, it's becoming more than a little unwieldy!

The library has Norman Stone's brief history of WW1 at the hold desk for me, so I'll be picking that up sometime on Monday.

Will there be a thread for people to post what they are currently reading, how they are liking it, and then what they've finished and what they thought? Or is there one already that I've missed seeing?

The book The Midnight War: the American intervention in Russia 1918-1920 spans the gap between the last months of the war and the immediate aftermath and is one of those curious historical events of which most people are unaware. The U.S. troops were sent into Russia in an attempt to re-open the Eastern front in 1918. With the end of the war in November they had their mission changed to provide support for the White Russians and ultimately to extract the Czech Legion from the Trans-Siberian railroad. I wouldn't class this book as a must read but if you like the obscure and if perchance you are a railroad buff it is definitely a book worth reading.

i read a YA a few years back about Rudyard Kipling's son called Kipling's Choice which was interesting look at how the fathers pushed their sons to sign up, not realising the sort of warfare their children would be fighting in.

#88
I think you are correct that this one thread might get unwieldy, however, I applaud your initiative in starting. It is a very broad subject with lots of excellent work done on the subject.

I also did not mean that you should add the Chanel book to your list as the WWI stuff is only periphery to the story of her life. I was struck by how much about the fleeing of Paris in August of 1914 and other WWI events were in the book and how they directly affected how she conducted business during that time.

I read the Rickenbacker book years (30 years?) ago and at the time thought it was very good. What a life that man lived! I will also readily admit that it was the Snoopy Red Baron cartoons that inspired me to read about him

I would also add Rin Tin Tin to your lists about the war. This is a story that starts in the trenches and ends up in Hollywood, but there would have been no Rin Tin Tin without the war, and I believe that it was during WWI that K9 Corps got their start. I have not read this book but have it on my TBR list.

I you add books about the Armenien Genocide to the list there is an excellent book titled Forgotten Fire about it. I think it is a fictionalized account of a family history.

Just come across this review of The Secret Rooms: A castle filled with intrigue, a plotting duchess and a mysterious death
by Catherine Bailey written by a friend on BookCrossing. http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/12411045/

>94 ardachy:, Oh yes, that one! I read The Secret Rooms last year and really enjoyed it. Although only the second half of the book really covers the war, it never would have been written if the author hadn't be trying to write a book about the war and discovered that all documentation of it at the archive she was using had disappeared.

It's been out for a while in the UK, but only came out in the US on December 31st. It also has several different subtitles depending on the edition.

#89 -- I had thought that we could use this thread to discuss the books as well? Do folks think it would be helpful to have a separate thread only for discussion?

If someone knows how to quickly & easily set up a poll, could they please add it? I'm about to head off to tackle some deadline work projects and will be AWOL for a few hours... With perhaps the question being "Should we set up a separate thread to discuss the WW1 reading that we're doing & leave this one as a resource with reading lists?"

I think that a separate thread will have to be up anyway because this one will grow pretty fast as more suggestions come in and people start reading books.

Thanks, Judy, for setting this up. I'm thinking that I'll keep the main thread -- this one -- devoted to reading suggestions and, when it's possible, set up its direct successor with a post for each subcategory, to make it easier for those searching (and for me to post!)

Then I'll create two separate discussion threads, one for the fiction and one for the nonfiction. People can follow either or both, as the mood takes them! I'll wait a few days, or until the # of posts here enables me to make a seamless transition, so folks who have starred this thread don't miss the link.

That sounds like a great plan, Suz. I originally voted "no" on the multple threads but I've changed my mind now that's I've thought about it some more. Structure is always nice.

It will be helpful to keep the thread of book suggestions separate from the actual reading threads, I think - otherwise we will probably run into many multiples of continuations of one thread and it will get quite unwieldy to find particular book conversations. So I think Suz's plan in #99 sounds good.

OK, so all we need to do is to drive the # of posts on here up to 150, or wherever the LT "continuation" feature kicks in!

I am listening to The Guns of August and indeed I do fall to sleep. I keep re-listening to the chapters. I think it will be good when I can find my hard copy and use it as a way to mark where I am.

Any one have any suggestions on how to stay awake? What works for you? Walking? Washing dishes? Dusting?

Well, I'll do my part by adding my recommendations of The ZImmermann Telegram, War Horse, Birdsong, A Farewell to Arms and All Quiet on the Western Front. I've read A Very Long Engagement too, but wasn't overly fond of it. Not a bad read, though, just not really my thing.

103. I listen to audiobooks when doing monotonous chores like washing up, ironing and the like. And travelling. I've realised that listening to them in bed isn't really the way to do it (for me at least), I'm like you and I fall asleep.

What Paws said about listening while doing chores. Audiobooks were great while I was packing boxes to move, and unpacking and sorting stuff out. Or doing any tedious kind of organizational/cleaning stuff that I don't need to think about. Indeed, it's kind of a reward for paying attention to that stuff -- I don't need to give up my reading in order to get it done! That said, a LOT depends on the narrator, for me. Some narrators have an annoying voice, and some are just bad. For instance, I listened to the first few sentences of the audio of Stonekiller by Robert Janes (not a WW1 book), narrated by a Frenchman (the main character is a French detective in WW2). Fine -- until I got to the word "breathed", which the narrator pronounced "breath-ED". I shrieked, and shut it down. Or Japantown, a thriller whose narrator mispronounced one basic Japanese name -- Kato should be KAH-to but became KAY-to -- and pronounced another one, Hara, no fewer than four different ways.

106. Yes! Narrators are crucial and it's so disappointing when you're facing with a bad one. I'm a bit spoiled as the first audiobooks I really read as an adult was the Harry Potter books narrated by Stephen Fry. That is the single greatest audiobook narration I have ever come across. Mind you, Stephen Fry is ALWAYS great, so it wasn't a surprise, but just HOW great he was narrating wasn't something I'd prepared for.

Derek Jacobi did a great job with The House of Silk and I'm very fond of authors reading their own work (if they have the skills for it, far from everyone does) - like Douglas Adams and Neil Gaiman. So good.

OK, I went ahead and added the two "reading" threads:

The Fiction thread: http://www.librarything.com/topic/163897

The Non-fiction thread: http://www.librarything.com/topic/163899

A couple of maritime histories:

A good overall history of naval strategy and battles, although the major focus is on the Battle of Jutland:
Naval Battles of the First World War by Geoffrey Bennett

A good 'biography' of a very eccentric WW1 battleship (H.M.S. Agincourt) -
The Big Battleship by Richard Hough

And a very well written biography:

Gallipoli Sniper by John Hamilton

The daughters of mars is a kindle daily deal today!

Ha, I just dropped by to post on that! I read this book last year and thought it was brilliant -- a great, epic novel following two sisters from Australia to Gallipoli and on to the Western front. It's $2.99, and once you buy it, you can get the audiobook for only $2.99 more.

I'll also be adding a section about recommended DVDs/films.

For instance, the Donovan Webster book, "Aftermath", was made into a documentary. I have (unwatched) DVDs of two films, "Passchandaele" and "The Wipers Times".

So if people want to make some suggestions about what could go on that list, by all means, toss them into the mix!

For anyone with a UK Kindle: Catastrophe by Max Hastings is available for 99p. Not sure for how long; it's not a daily deal.

When I dropped by before I simply posted the vote box and forgot to comment. This is a great thread and I plan to soon scroll through slowly and add some of these books to my wishlist.

This month I am going to be reading One of Ours by Willa Cather.

For those interested, BBC World Book Club did an interview with Pat Barker about Regeneration. THe podcast is available via Itunes worldwide. You can also listen via the BBC website.

I have been browsing the shops for World War One books to add for my Thingamajigamy that is coming up on 14th. I have found one on the impact of the Great War on Scotland: The Flowers of the Forest: Scotland and the First World War by Trevor Royle. I will be adding this to my collection shortly.

Something else to add to the list: I've just picked up a copy of Last Post by Max Arthur - published in 2005 it consists of interviews with the 21 known surviving British veterans of WWI who were still alive when the author began researching the book in 2004. By the time the book was published, only four still remained alive; by now of course all have died. I'm looking forward to reading these personal stories of survivors. It's amazing that several of them outlived many of their war-time companions by almost 100 years.

When I was growing up, WW1 veterans were already elderly to me -- they were older than my grandparents, although my grandmother's elder brother fought in the trenches. (I have his embarkation card, his remaining ration cards, a leave pass, and some other memorabilia; he and his wife had no children, and somehow all this ended up in my mother's hands.) And yet when I was working at Vimy, we'd reasonably often find veterans coming past, touring the ground where they had once fought.

I did a bit of Googling -- the last veteran of trench warfare died in July 2009, aged 111. Harry Patch featured in a WW1 documentary, Veterans, aired by the BBC.

The last combat veteran was Claude Choules, who died at 110 in May 2011; he had served in the British (and later the Australian) navy. The last veteran was a woman, Florence Patterson, who served as a mess steward for the fledgling RAF as a member of the WRAF, and who died in 2012, less than two weeks before her 111th birthday.

Looking at this list, I'm thinking how lonely it must have been for these veterans as their peers died off, and there was no one in their lives who knew and remembered what that war was like. Few seem to have talked about it (perhaps understandably): it was a different kind of world, and the gap between the public's understanding of war and its reality was perhaps wider than ever before, even as it just wasn't done to talk about one's feelings in ways that are common today. Still, there's a certain kind of comfort in knowing that you aren't the only person around who has endured a specific kind of traumatic experience, and to be literally the only person left in the world who has is a reminder of why death may be preferable to extreme old age.

Yes I remember when Harry Patch died - I made reference to it that year when I was leading a Remembrance Day service in November 2009. It must indeed have been a very lonely time for the last few who lived so very much longer even than their fellow veterans, let alone 'those who did not return' - to whom the above mentioned book is dedicated.

Mind you, it must be odd when your lifetime experiences become "history". I had a taste of that when my niece's middle school class began discussing the events of 9/11; she was born almost exactly a year later, and came to me to ask what it was like to witness it on the spot. For the first time, I think I really viscerally understood why the veterans of the trenches didn't discuss their experiences. It's not just the difficulty explaining, it's the awareness that what you survived is now the subject of curiosity by those who can never completely understand. Weird. Perhaps it's like becoming a parent -- until your first child is born, you think you can imagine what parenthood involves, emotionally, but those on the other side know you can't until you experience it. For some things, imagination is inadequate. Maybe that's why so many novelists turn to subjects revolving around wars? Not just the intensity of the drama, but a need to try to convey it to those who weren't there? OK, I'm rambling, which is usually a clue that I should shut up and go do some work!

Interesting rambling though... A friend of mine (who used to work for the Ministry of Defence) said to me a month or so before his first child was born, that he felt like a soldier about to 'go over the top' for the first time. He knew intellectually that the experience he was about to have (let alone his wife!) would be life changing, but he could not really imagine what that meant until it had happened. Incidentally, he is now a writer.

I think very few of that generation discussed it. I was reading an obituary in the paper of a WW2 veteran who won a medal for action while on a torpedo boat. Until his grandaughter was doing a school project and interviewed him about his wartime service and experiences he'd never discussed it. The family knew nothing of it at all. I think that's amazing, but I wonder if that's how they coped, by compartmentalising it and locking it away.

Helen, that makes sense to me. And certainly that generation was raised to have a "stiff upper lip", or at least, not to indulge in emotional displays. And the more traumatic something is, the more compartmentalizing it might be the only way to cope. I know it took me years to even admit to myself what I had seen on 9/11. And that was one day, not a war.

Two memories concerning WWI vets.

1. When I was earning my first money mowing lawns during the summer WWI was only 40+ years old so the vets were very much in evidence. At the time I was reading Falcons of France and I had set my lunch bag and the book on the front porch of one of my customers while I was mowing his lawn. I finished mowing the back yard and when I came around to the front with my mower my customer was sitting in a lawn chair on the porch and thumbing through my book. When I approached he looked up and said, "Those pilots were nuts! They were all over the sky in a fight and when they lost they came down like an anvil on fire. Now me, I preferred the trenches even though they were muddy stinking holes."

He paused and reached down to a small parcel he had setting beside him, pulled out two small boxes and opened them to show me their contents. One was a silver star and one was a purple heart. He said he earned them one night after spending all of the previous day listening to the plaintive cry of one of the men out in No Man's Land who had been wounded and couldn't crawl back. When it got dark he decided he had had enough so he handed his rifle to one of the men in his squad and before anyone could order him back he slipped over the top and started crawling in what he thought was the direction of the wounded man.

He said it was very difficult to pinpoint the direction of the cries and he crawled around for the better part of an hour. Because the man continued to call for help the area was under continuous but light fire. He finally found the man by literally crawling right over him and accidentally shoving the man's face into the mud (he was lying on his stomach and was face down in a small depression). The wounded man choked, jerked up and shouted and then practically everyone on the German side started shooting in their general direction. He lay as flat as he could and started pulling and dragging the injured man back to his lines. Two bullets creased his backside and left long bloody trails down part of his back and through the flesh of his buttocks but he didn't notice this until he got back to his trench.

When he got back to his lines and pulled the wounded soldier into the safety of the trench he found out it was the company commander who was missing and presumed dead. When it was discovered that he too was wounded he was ordered to carry the officer to the rear. He finally reached an ambulance and he and the officer were tossed on board and were driven to an aid station. He said it was the worst bumpy, jouncing ride he ever had.

2. I was drafted and while in the service I read a copy of Sagittarius Rising. I was so impressed by the book that when I returned home I tracked down a recently printed hardback of the book (there were a lot of reprints of WWI books in the late 1960's in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the war). On the back flyleaf I noticed that the copyright had been renewed by the author so, through the publisher, I sent him a letter requesting permission to send my copy of his book for an autograph. About 3 months later I opened my mail box and found a letter from Corfu, Greece. It turned out to be Mr. Lewis's place of residence and he wrote, " Yes. Why not? Send it along. But better hurry. I may be dead!"

I sent it and in due course it came back with the following inscription:

"For Alco261. It's splendid to be young!"

Cecil Lewis 12-3-74

Mr. Lewis died in 1997 - I didn't have to hurry but I'm certainly glad I did.

Thisis an awesome thread. WW I has been a huge interest of mine all my life. Each year since 1944 i have picked the best book read in the year and here are the World War One books which have earned that accolade from me:

697. The Guns of August, by Barbara W. Tuchman (read 31 May 1962) (Book of the Year) (Pulitzer Nonfiction prize in 1963)
778. The Price of Glory Verdun 1916, by Alistair Horne (read 7 Sep 1964) (Book of the Year)
807. In Flanders Fields: The 1917 Campaign by Leon Wolff (read 8 June 1965) (Book of the Year)
995. Asquith: Portrait of a Man and an Era, by Roy Jenkins (read 22 Jan 1969) (Book of the Year)
2154. Chronicle of Youth: The War Diary 1913-1917, by Vera Brittain (read 14 Jul 1988) (Book of the Year)
2460. Dreadnought Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War, by Robert K. Massie (read 7 Sep 1992) (Book of the Year)
3042. Back to the Front: An Accidental Historian Walks the Trenches of World War I, by Stephen O'Shea (read 21 Dec 1997) (Book of the Year)
3863. Castles of Steel Britain, Germany, and the Winning of the Great War at Sea, by Robert K. Massie (read 4 Mar 2004) (Book of the Year)
4068. Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour Armistice Day 1918 World War I and Its Violent Climax, by Joseph E. Persico (read 5 Sep 2005) (Book of the Year)

Of course, there are many great WWI books I have read but are not on the list because they were beat out by one of these books or by other great books the year I read them.

Those are astonishing stories, alco! Thanks for sharing...

Schmerguis, great list! I definitely agree with you on the Brittain and O'Shea books (the latter is one of the best of this genre, the 'look back', that I can think of.) I had already put a question mark beside In Flanders Fields and may have to act on that one now! The Asquith bio is an intriguing book, and Massie is always great value, IMHO.

My family has lots of WWI stories. My grandfather and Great-Uncle were second generation immigrants who were bilingual. Both of these men were drafted. My Grandfather served in the artillery and did not get shipped to France. My Great-Uncle refused to carry a gun and so was assigned as an ambulance driver. He was shipped to France quite soon after he completed his basic training. He has the distinction of attending the same man's funeral twice. A man from our area died in France and was buried there. My Uncle attended the military funeral for him at that time. After the war he was re-interred in a local cemetery. By that time my uncle was home from the war and so attended the funeral that was held back here.

I wonder if there are any books about women veterans of WWI?

Still wading my way through this thread. .and starring.

>128 benitastrnad:

There are several books about women's experience in WWI listed under the civilian/social/cultural experience heading. Here are a few more that I didn't see listed at the top of the thread:

Fruits of Victory: The Woman's Land Army of America in the Great War by Elaine Weiss
Home Fires Burning: The Great War Diaries of Georgina Lee
A Sisterhood of Suffering and Service: Women and Girls of Canada and Newfoundland During the First World War edited by Sarah Glassford & Amy Shaw (no LT copies yet)
American Women in World War I: They Also Served by Lettie Gavin
Rosie's Mom: Forgotten Women Workers of the First World War by Carrie Brown

Hopefully once we make the leap to a second thread and I break these up by category, the increasingly long list of suggestions will become simpler to navigate...

Last year I did a wonderful year long WWI read with an online group: War Through the Generations (not part of LT). Each year they have a different war to read and study. I'm gathering up my list of the reading I did for that challenge. There were several fiction series such as Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear and the Bess Crawford series by Charles Todd.

The three best I read about this period of history are

The Beauty and the Sorrow by Peter Englund. This is told from letters and diaries of different participants: The youngest and oldest were females--a 12 year old German school girl) and a 49 year old Scottish aid worker); in between, there are other women and men who represent almost every country participating in the war - Germany, Belgium, France, Great Britain, Australia, the US, New Zealand, Italy (including an Italian American who returned to Europe to fight for the fatherland), Russia, an American woman married to a Polish aristocrat living in Poland, a Dane serving in the German army, and a Venezuelan soldier of fortune in the Ottoman army. They were infantrymen, cavalrymen, ambulance drivers, civil servants, civilians trapped in a world of diminishing food and shelter, alpine climbers, fighter pilots, well-diggers, telecommunications linemen, artillerymen, field surgeons, nurses, officers, enlisted, POWs. Englund draws on their personal documents (and even has pictures of them) so we can see how each of them experienced the war from his or her own perspective.

To End All Wars by Adam Hochschild. This one should be required reading by every citizen, politician, and military officer in the world. It is a great follow-up to Barbara Tuchman's masterpiece Guns of August.

Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain. Heartbreaking, beautifully written, the story of a young girl who joins the war effort as a nurse, and who loses several people near and dear to her.

Testament of Youth was made into a rather goody-goody Masterpiece Theatre TV show a while back - don't think it captured the idealism and the horror that the book describes so well.

I have read both Chronicle of Youth and Testament of Youth, and found Chronicle more consistently poignant reading:

2154. Chronicle of Youth: The War Diary 1913-1917, by Vera Brittain (read 14 Jul 1988) (Book of the Year) This is one of the most moving, heart-wrenching, beautifully-written books I have ever read. It is a diary from the years 1913 to 1917. It opens when the author was under 21, on Jan 1, 1913, progresses thru the year and into the war. She falls in love with Roland Leighton, who died in France on Dec 23, 1915, and tells of her time as a nurse in 1916 and 1917. Her brother Edward died in action on June 15, 1918, but the diary does not extend to that date. This is a wrenching book, vivid, super-poignant--written with great beauty. She says much of The Story of an African Farm, by Olive Schreiner, which was the bestseller of 1883. The book is drenched in literary England, full of beautiful heart-rending quotes. The book is crammed with such moving things, it is impossible to convey how strongly it has affected me. This is certainly one of the most exceptional things I have read in ages. At the end of the year I selected it as the best book I read in 1988. (5 stars )

2544. Testament of Youth An Autobiographical Study of the Years 1900-1925, by Vera Brittain (read 25 Oct 1993) This is the book which made Vera Brittain famous. It is a great book, and I absorbedly immersed myself anew in the awful horror of World War I. Some of her views are so dated, but the account of the years from 1914 to 1918 is simply superb. She carries the story to her marriage in 1925. The book has scattered through it poems by the author and by Roland ((her fiance killed in the war) and some of them seem very fine. (five stars)

I finished and REVIEWED Margaret MacMillan's excellent history, The War that Ended Peace: The Road to 1914.

I am home and I have found my hard copy of Guns of August and so I will be back to reading it soon.

>136 maggie1944: You'll love it....and if you're into Audio books, Davina Porter's narrated version is really stunning.

I did enjoy a couple of days of listening and reading at the same time and then was distracted by some other books. I'll get back to it.

I just finished listening to The Monuments Men in my car while driving to and fro and enjoyed it. Feel like I'm steeping in war these days. Oh, well. The more we know our history, the bigger the chance we can avoid making the same mistakes?

>136 maggie1944:, >138 maggie1944: Karen, I'm slowly making my way through The Guns of August and I'm really glad I stuck with it. This afternoon we're thinking about going to see "The Monuments Men" at the cinema. It's such a gray Seattle day.

>139 EBT1002: It is a gray day in Seattle, and a movie would be perfect. I liked The Monuments Men but I've not heard that the movie is all that good. I'll be interested to read what you think.

^ I liked the movie.

I heard Robert Edsel talk on BookTV and he said that in order to turn it into a story that would work as a movie that the characters often had to be placed together when in real life they didn't see each other for months. He said that people who had read the book should expect those changes and not complain that the movie was different than the book. He said it was important to get the story out and so it did not matter to him that it was different than the book. I thought his attitude was a different approach and I appreciated his viewpoint.

Yes, I think he is right. And truthfully, that is the attitude the Monuments Men had, too.

I'm glad someone who's see The Monuments Men movie liked it as I've read and heard some less than stellar reviews and was planning on going to see it next weekend.

I think that the documentary "The Rape of Europa" is also a very good movie about the subject. It was so interesting that it didn't seem like a History Channel brush over or a dry documentary - but it also was not a docudrama either.

It's not a book, but a young teacher I know found this as he was preparing to teach his high school classes the unit on WWI. A terrific condensation of the entire sorry mess.

http://themetapicture.com/if-wwi-was-a-bar-fight/

I have just finished reading The Absolutist by John Boyne. I found it quite gripping, better than Birdsong, The First Casualty or Regeneration in my view although I enjoyed all of those too.

Just to report that The Marne, 1914 by Holger H. Herwig is plodding and dull.

He trots the German and the French armies here and there like a kid playing with toy soldiers, and forgets all the good stories and the people and what's at stake.

Bought it by mistake - don't you make the same mistake.

I have been working on the US Presidents Challenge. Yes, read biographies of all the Presidents. I usually read a few books about the time period of the particular president I am reading. Coincidentally, I recently finished a bio on Woodrow Wilson so I have been catching up on WWI history. I just finished Make the Kaiser Dance: Living Memories of a Forgotten War: The American Experience in World War I by Henry Berry published in 1978. This was my second reading of the book; the first was 30+ years ago. It is definitely one of my 5 star book. In 1976, Berry started interviewing WWI veterans who were in their 80s and 90s then. The book is a compilation of their personal stories. Very enjoyable.

On a side note, Mr. Berry was WWII veteran. If he is still living, he is probably around the same age now as the WWI vets he interviewed in 1976.

I was given a suggestion to read The Steady Running of the Hour by Justin Go. I can't say it is "about" the Great War but the war is definitely a character in the book. The author takes a modern young man searching to solve a mystery of the Great War's time and bounces back and forth between his story, and the story he is searching to unravel. Quite captivating... so far. I'm about 1/2 way through the book.

I finished listening to the the World War I epic A Soldier of the Great War by Mark Helprin. I can write the review for this book in one word - interminable. I wanted to read this book because it is about Italy and the Italian Front in World War I. There is not much written on this subject and I thought this epic novel would fill that gap. It doesn't. I think it is a good paeon to the beauties of Rome, but other than that I couldn't figure this book out. This shouldn't surprise me because I didn't care much for the other book of Helprin's that I read - Winter's Tale. Helprin seems to be a writer of some regard and frankly, after plowing through two lengthy novels of his, I wonder why. This novel might be a farce, but I am not sure. It might be magical realism, but I am not sure. I am sure that it is not a war novel, or historical fiction. I finished it, but I would not recommend this novel.

I have just finished reading the novel Life after Life by Kate Atkinson which covers both WW1 and WW2, the connections between the two and a 'what if' as well. A rather good look at war from a woman's perspective.

I've finally started on a bit of WWI reading, Anne Perry's WWI series that starts with No Graves As Yet. This first book in the series starts on the day the Archduke is assassinated and looking at the end I see the book stops on the day War is declared. I'm midway through and not overly impressed with the book. I'm not sure yet what is "wrong" with the book other than that it isn't nearly as interesting as some of Perry's better mysteries. There's something not quite right with the characterization I think. I'll write a brief review when I finish in a few days. This gives a good look at English life just before the war but I'm not gathering much insight into the war itself.

>151 benitastrnad: Sorry to hear of the disappointment with A Soldier of the Great War. That was one I was looking forward to tackling.

#153
I have read 3 of this series by Anne Perry and enjoyed them. They are slow builders. As mysteries they aren't much, but as a window into middle class English life they are very good. I will tell you that as the war drags on they get more complex - just as life did for the characters, but I agree that they are not the normal Anne Perry mystery. Lots more philosophical content and attempt at describing the reactions of the populace to the events in the war.

>153 RBeffa: I felt the same way about No Graves As Yet when I read it several years ago. Something seemed off about that book compared with the William Monk or the Thomas & Charlotte Pitt series. I haven't read any more of her WWI series.

I finished up No Graves As Yet and posted a brief review. Disappointed with it, although it did pick up some. Way too drawn out and ridiculous amounts of angst. I will give the next book in the series (Shoulder the Sky) a go as that is where the direct involvement of WWI seems to lie.

One hundred years ago the Christmas Truce in World War I.
Some historians now think the "soccer Game" never really happened but the rest of this little song is historically accurate. The Following year oficers were standing by to make sure that the "truce" did not re-occur - and the harsh reality of the war had perhaps hardened attitudes as well.

Christmas in the Trenches

My name is Francis Tolliver, I come from Liverpool,
Two years ago the war was waiting for me after school.
To Belgium and to Flanders to Germany to here
I fought for King and country I love dear.
'Twas Christmas in the trenches where the frost so bitter hung,
The frozen fields of France were still, no Christmas song was sung,
Our families back in England were toasting us that day,
Their brave and glorious lads so far away.

I was lying with my messmate on the cold and rocky ground
When across the lines of battle came a most peculiar sound
Says I, "Now listen up, me boys!" each soldier strained to hear
As one young German voice sang out so clear.
"He's singing bloody well, you know!" my partner says to me
Soon one by one each German voice joined in in harmony
The cannons rested silent, the gas clouds rolled no more
As Christmas brought us respite from the war.

As soon as they were finished and a reverent pause was spent
"God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" struck up some lads from Kent
The next they sang was "Stille Nacht," "Tis 'Silent Night'," says I
And in two tongues one song filled up that sky.
"There's someone coming towards us!" the front line sentry cried
All sights were fixed on one lone figure coming from their side
His truce flag, like a Christmas star, shone on that plain so bright
As he bravely strode unarmed into the night.

Soon one by one on either side walked into No Man's land
With neither gun nor bayonet we met there hand to hand
We shared some secret brandy and we wished each other well
And in a flare-lit soccer game we gave 'em hell.
We traded chocolates, cigarettes, and photographs from home
These sons and fathers far away from families of their own
Young Sanders played his squeeze box and they had a violin
This curious and unlikely band of men.

Soon daylight stole upon us and France was France once more
With sad farewells we each began to settle back to war
But the question haunted every heart that lived that wondrous night
"Whose family have I fixed within my sights?"
'Twas Christmas in the trenches, where the frost so bitter hung
The frozen fields of France were warmed as songs of peace were sung
For the walls they'd kept between us to exact the work of war
Had been crumbled and were gone for evermore.

My name is Francis Tolliver, in Liverpool I dwell
Each Christmas come since World War I I've learned its lessons well
That the ones who call the shots won't be among the dead and lame
And on each end of the rifle we're the same.
-- John McCucheon

"Sister" the war diary of a nurse by Helen Dore Boylston an account in diary form of her time nursing during WWI. Plenty of humor, but, well nursing during WWI, pretty grim. It is an interesting, engaging account that doesn't dwell on the horror, but doesn't sugarcoat it either. The spirit of the British soldiers and the industry and ingenuity shown in providing entertainment are so simliar to WWII accounts that it took the nursing details to remind me which World War story was being told.

Somewhere in France is a novel about nurses in France during WWI.

Phryne Fisher and Maisie Dobbs were both ambulance drivers in the war, and the novels about their careers as private investigators often deal with the aftermath of the war. In particular, Birds of a Feather is about an aspect of the war that had not penetrated my consciousness before - at least not fully. Chilling.

#156

I have read several in the Revely family series by Anne Perry and they do get better. In particular I like the parts of the books that deal with the home front and the effects of the war on the people in the small towns and villages of England. I find the mysteries contrived and not that interesting but I do like the parts about philosophy and religion and the lives of everyday people, especially women during that war. The cultural upheaval wrought by the war was massive and she does a good job of dealing with that.