Hi, I'd appreciate some help in finding the best single work on the First World War to read. I'm looking for one that doesn't entertain silly notions about Britain entering the conflict due to morality and a belief in international law, etc.
I was considering Ferro's The Great War, but I hear it is dated.
I also was considering reading The Guns of August, but it's just on the origins of the war.
A friend also recommended The Great War and Modern Memory; is it worthwhile?
Cheers in advance.
There are very few 'comprehensive' books about the entire Great War because of just how absolutely massive of an event it is. I'm sure there are some out there but I haven't heard about them, but I'll look around a bit.
I'm looking for one that doesn't entertain silly notions about Britain entering the conflict due to morality and a belief in international law, etc.
Just briefly I want to touch this. Why not entertain "silly notions" about Britain entering the conflict for those reasons? Maybe the leadership were not so idealistic but the people were and those were the justifications that got millions of men to over the course of the war to march off to war and fight and die and thus they are important to entertain. I may be stretching here but it seems to me (and it worries me) that you're going into a topic and, from the outset, having strong opinions about controversial topics in the field despite not knowing anything about it.
The fact is, you're never going to find groups that agree on everything and you can't just rely on one books interpretation. Sometimes entertaining those "silly notions" can give you greater perspective of the war and its events.
Now for books:
"The First World War: Volume I: To Arms" by Hew Strachan is a sort of new book (2005 I believe) and it covers the introduction to the war in extraordinary depth. It also doesn't focus exclusively on the Western Front, in fact, it spends comparatively little time on the Western Front compared to everything else. Gives everything equal time essentially and I like that, a very rounded introduction to the war. Something of a thousand pages of content if I recall.
The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchmann is an even more in depth look of the opening stages of the war on the Western Front. It's one of those books everyone reads because it's a classic work on the subject but it's not nearly as modern. I'd go to "The Marne: The Opening of World War I" by Holger Herwig which covers a bit more outside of...August...and far more context and ridiculous depth of the Western Front going into what we now know as trench warfare through the 'race to the sea' as you'll know it.
Looking through my list of books I haven't actually purchased yet I just stumbled across "The First World War" by once again, Hew Strachan. Just "The First World War", not the volume set. It's a much more condensed 340 page book of 10 chapters that covers the opening of the war, the major campaigns, the mutinies, the Ottoman Empire, the naval campaigns, Japan, the final March Offensive and the Hundred Days Offensive and the peace. So maybe you want to check that out but I haven't personally read it and it may suffer from brevity.
White Heat and The Great War by John Terraine are both worth a read although they are slightly anglo-centric.