Product Description
An illustrated history of the first industrial war in Europe and elsewhere, from the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 to the Treaty of Versailles and its consequences for the defeated powers. Complemented by full-color artwork and over 250 contemporary black-and-white photographs of famous battles, including the Somme, Verdun, Paschendaele, Cambrai and Mons. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

True to its title. Wiest did a great job.

Beautiful big size book about the Great War. Abundantly rich in good size and text-related pictures. Text very informative, concise and clear. Well organised, elegant look, overall impression is excellent.

If one thing is lacking it might be the maps. One feels there could be more maps of battles or scenarios, but perhaps that would make too much.Andy Wiest has another "brief" and illustrated history of the Vietnam War in the Osprey collection that is also excellent, and which made me decide to choose this next book of his to read. I am now reading Ernst Junger's memoir "Storm of Steel" now, to complete the "experience" with a eye-witness account. Both are wonderful complements.

Amazing book.
This is not the first book I've read about the World War I. And this one is going to be one of the best. Not only because the Wiest made such a big story in short one, but outstanding pictures that frames it all around. Some of them are rarely seen everywhere else. Although the book covers the war itself, but also it gives some basics how it feels to be at war. The book would be interesting for teenagers that couldn't see it at all. And of course it is interesting for those who just like the true stories...

Excellently written account of the Great War!
Andy Wiest's The Illustrated History of World War I is a thorough, yet easy to read book on one of the most cataclysmic events of the 20th century. Wiest's superb writing skills combined with stunning black and white pictures, and maps bring the Great War to life. Wiest does an excellent job of explaining a complicated subject in a manner in which is easy to understand. Well worth the price! I reccomend it to anyone who is looking for a good history of the Great War.

A Wonderful Book
What a clear, well written account of World War I.It makes this momentous event real and immediate to the reader.The pictures and captions add so much.No one can go wrong with this literate account of a noble and terrible time in world history. ... Read more

Product Description
Based on a decade of research in French and German archives, The Myth of the Great War reveals what actually happened on the battlefield, as opposed to what French and British commanders and governments claimed. John Mosier analyses campaigns routinely ignored, and shows why conventional accounts of such major battles as Verdun are incorrect. He explains how German weapons, tactics, training and leadership were consistently superior and why their losses were very substantially less than those of the Allies. Mosier also discusses the major military leaders on both sides - Joffre, Petain, Foch, Gallieni, von Moltke, Ludendorff, von Falkenhayn, von Mudra, Pershing, French, Haig, Wilson and others. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Exciting and informative
This book is an in-depth analysis of World War I that reaches an interesting conclusion: that the German's training, tactics, ability to adapt, and reliance on firepower over infantry tactics resulted in their being able to practically master the battlefield. Focusing heavily (though not exclusively) on the Western Front, he carries through a narrative that explains a great deal about the operation of both sides throughout the course of the war. In the final chapters, Professor Mosier covers America's entrance into the war, and it's affect on the actual management of the war.

Overall, I found this an exciting and informative look at the Great War. I found the author's narrative easy to read and understand, with the chapters being short, which makes putting the book down and picking it up again later much easier. I feel as though this book has given me a better understanding of the War than what I have gotten from many other books. I highly recommend this book.

Thought provoking as good histories should be...
I will say that I am not an authority on WWI.I will say that I have read many good historical accounts and far more bad ones.
Too often so-called historical accounts are simply a rehash of works that have come before them and they turn errors of research, personal opinion, and blatant politicizing of facts into the truth.This is a common occurance in school textbooks, where lack of fact checking results in errors being propagated by one author after another.To paraphrase Goebbels, an error repeated often enough, becomes the truth.This is doubly so in the age of mass media where history is digested and regurgitated on a regular basis by one author after another to feed the great publishing mills.I think it is within reach of any decent writer to write a "history" on just about any subject using only published literature.Would it be worth reading?Probably not.

Not so with The Myth of the Great War.It is well worth reading if only to open a new perspective on a conflict that seems all but forgotten in the US today.

The book merits reading in my opinion because the author has done so much personal research of original sources and ground truth.He has gone to the actual battle fields and walked the ground, maps in hand to check veracity of the personal and offical accounts of what took place when and where.He has also compared the offical casualty totals with the totals in the onsite cemetaries revealing the difference in casualty figures reported and those actually suffered.He also reveals how like recent history, governments are prone to claim true defeats as victories if it serves their purpose.

He has relied on original official histories,personal diaries of participants both high and low on the chain of command and provided annotations on them. He tellingly points out the difference between reality as recounted by the men in the trenches and the wishful thinking reported by the High Commands to their ignorant governments. Through citations he underscores the differences between the officially trumpeted version of events and the truth.

I have read a large number of the reviews and have to smile because the Author seems to have gored a large number of sacred cows.In an age when the offical version coming out of any government office is deemed to be self serving and far from the truth, I have to ask myself why the critics of the Author feel that anything was different in 1914.The Author shows quite convincingly through citations that the Allied military commands were hiding the true nature and mismanagement of the war and the monsterous casualties the armies under their command were suffering.As the English would say, the proof of the pudding is in the tasting.Events back up the Authors assertions.

The Author claims that the US actually won the war.I personally have often wondered why in fact the US needed to send over 2 million men to fight in a war that by English and French accounts was already well in hand and on it's way to being won.The Author again exposes the lie through the participants own words.Personal diaries of both French and British officers reveal the fact that both their militaries were on the verge of collapse, while the German army was freshly reinforced by over a million men from the Eastern Front.
Why else would the French and Briish try by any means to thwart Gen. Pershing's attempts to field an American Army, preferring to use American boys as simple replacements for their depleted forces.

The Author makes the valid point, that the Germans were in no way defeated militarily by the Allies, and were primed to go to war again in a mere 20 years, while at the same time the erstwhile victors took the appeasement path, the memory of the hideous casualty lists from 20 years before still fresh in their minds.

Were the Germans and Americans supermen?Probably not.This new history of WWI proves the truth of the old adage, that the victor in a war is the side that makes the fewest mistakes.
The book makes it clear that the Germans made fewer mistakes.In counter to that, the appearance of overwhelming numbers of Americans who as events would bear out, seemed to make fewer mistakes than both the British and French, convinced the Germans to cease hostilities.

There is much in the book that rings truthful based on other independent reading by this author.

I would highly recommend it to both the serious student of the war and anyone with a passing interest.

A Waste of Good Paper and Ink
There are numerous books on the military aspects of World War One far better written and researched than Mosier's feeble attempt.Hew Strachan, Martin Gilbert, Gordon Corrigan, Niall Ferguson, Ian Beckettand David Stevenson have all produced recent volumes which are vastly superior in virtually every respect.

Mosier, does a decent job of illuminating German tactical finesse, innovation and training.But at the same time he misses the larger point (just like Ludendorff did) in failing to inform his reader that tactically winning engagements means little if they do not contribute to an overall strategy for victory.While the German Army was certainly the most effective military force of the First World War (thought probably man for man not the equal of the superb ANZACs') it suffered under terrible strategic confusion and misdirection by senior level leadership.

Mosier feels compelled to burnish the image of the American contribution beyond what is either factual or realistic.The great American contribution in World War One was not so much their mixed performance in the autumn battles of 1918 where they repeated virtually every mistake that the allies had made three years earlier.But rather the strategic potential that they represented by their rapidly growing force and experience for the planned 1919 offensives. ... Read more

Product Description
Shay looks at the crucial yet unheralded role played by support troops in World War I, in particular those in the medical branch. The unarmed men of the 103rd Field Hospital Company, 26th ("Yankee") Division spent a year and a half in France performing their duty bravely under arduous conditions. The experiences of the men of the 103rd Field Hospital were undoubtedly shared by any member of a frontline field hospital. Based on nearly four years of research, including original archival material, he fills an important gap in the military history of World War I. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Best Single Volume History of World War I
This is the best single volume history of World War I that I have ever seen. It is balanced between what was happening where, with why it was happening. Perhaps there is more on the 'why' in this book than in any other I have seen. It is well illustrated and well documented with hundreds of first hand reports from diary entries, letters, newspaper reports, speeches and other original documents.

Each of the twelve chapters begins with an introductory essay, followed by an chronology of the period, and then the first hand reports. I find this approach to be excellent. The separation of the narrative from the detail allows the author to concentrate on the big picture while including all of the details in the later section.

Even after reading Dr. Carlisle's excellent description I still find it hard to believe that the nations of Europe were so ready for war that the really rather minor events in the Balkans would lead to such slaughter. I suppose that the leaders simply didn't know, and couldn't believe what was going to happen. ... Read more

Product Description
A short history of the campaigns of World War I used as a text at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Covers the Fronties, Marne, East Prussia, Eastern Front, Dardanelles, Verdun-Somme, Italy & the Balkand, Mesopotamia & Palestine, Western Front, The German Drives, and St. Mihiel & Meuse-Argonne Operations. ... Read more

Product Description
Although events in East Asia were a sideshow in the great drama of the First World War, what happened there shattered the accord between Japan and the United States. This book pursues the two-fold question of how and why U.S.-Japanese tensions developed into antagonism during the war by inquiring into the historical sources of both sides. Kawamura explains this complex phenomenon by looking at various factors: conflicts of national interests--geopolitical and economic; perceptual problems such as miscommunication, miscalculation, and mistrust; and, most important of all, incompatible approaches to foreign policy. America's universalism and the unilateralism inherent in Wilsonian idealistic internationalism clashed with Japan's particularistic regionalism and the pluralism that derived from its strong sense of racial identity and anti-Western nationalistic sentiments. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Well written summary in plain English for kids
Got it from the library, even enjoyable from an adult's perspective. ... Read more