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The First World War: A Complete History

A Complete History

Martin Gilbert

Holt Paperbacks

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ISBN10: 0805076174
ISBN13: 9780805076172

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688 Pages

$33.99

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It was to be the war to end all wars, and it began at 11:15 on the morning of June 28, 1914, in an outpost of the Austro-Hungarian Empire called Sarajevo. It would end officially almost five years later. Unofficially, it has never ended: The horrors we live with today were born in the First World War.

It left millions—civilians and soldiers—maimed or dead. And it left us with new technologies of death: tanks, planes, and submarines; reliable rapid-fire machine guns; and field artillery, poison gas, and chemical warfare. It introduced us to U-boat packs and strategic bombing, to unrestricted war on civilians and mistreatment of prisoners. Most of all, it changed our world. In its wake, empires toppled, monarchies fell, whole populations lost their national identities as political systems and geographic boundaries realigned. Instabilities were institutionalized, enmities enshrined. Manners, mores, codes of behavior; literature and the arts; education and class distinctions—all underwent a vast sea change. In all these ways, the twentieth century can be said to have been born on the morning of June 28, 1914.

Reviews

Praise for The First World War: A Complete History

"One of the first books that anyone should read in beginning to try to understand this war and this century."—The New York Times Book Review

"For the general reader who wants to know the both what happened (on the field and off) and how it felt for the men who did the fighting, this is the best single-volume history of the First World War that has yet been written."—Newsday

"Gilbert covers all the war's multiple fronts and follows the combat from beginning to end, and he does so in a way that brings distant events to painful immediacy. His work helps keep the memory of fourteen million victims alive."—The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Among the thousands of accounts of the conflict, Gilbert's is remarkable, even stunning."—The Boston Globe

Reviews from Goodreads