John Keegan - The First World War

Pros: Facts, facts and more facts
Cons: DULL, Sleep-inducing

"Saving Private Ryan" started me on a war reading marathon. I've read most of Stephen Ambrose's wonderful works on WWII including "D-Day" and "Citizen Soldier" (my personal favorite). I also read a definitive book on the...

Pros: Gives perspective on why things happened as they did.
Cons: Dense at points on data and short overall on maps.

How did the assassination of an archduke in Serbia trigger a war which engulfed Europe, America, Australia, Africa and parts of Asia? Why was the war fought in trenches with so many casualties and so little ground gained? Why did the US enter the war?...

Pros: Highly accessible popular history
Cons: None, really

The Second Thirty Years War began in August 1914 when the pot finally boiled over in Europe. Its first installment--World War I-- besides laying waste to tens of millions of lives, destroyed the European monarchies and their empires. It obliterated the ...

Pros: Keegan. Period. What more need be said?
Cons: Not top-flight Keegan - but still, it is Keegan

It is by now redundant to praise John Keegan. He and Steve Ambrose hold pride of place in the field. Deservedly so, as the latest Keegan work demonstrates.

And yet, this time, the Keegan magic does not quite work. If the Great War is now to...

Pros: Lucid, fascinating, powerful
Cons: It ends

On November 4, 1918, near the French-Belgian border, a British officer rallied his men as they struggled under raking German machine guns to cross the Sambre Canal: "You're doing very well, my boy!"

It was another ghastly morning in...

Pros: Well written
Cons: Not enough space in one book to cover this war

This is the third book by Keegan that I have read. If you love military history and have not read anything by Keegan, get out there and pick up one. You will be impressed.

Keegan does and excellent job of balancing the mundane details of...

Pros: very readable, Author is "the" expert on the subject
Cons: length of book limits the depth of explanations

As this century comes to a close, many authors are looking back at the events surrounding the First World War, and how it's legacy affected the rest of the century, for better or worse. The author, one of the leading military historian of our time, has...