100 Best World War I Books of All Time

Doris Kearns GoodwinSo beautifully written. But more importantly, for me, she was writing about battles and military stuff and things that you don’t imagine that sometimes a woman might be so adept at. (Source)

Ruth HarrisThis is a very strange book for me to choose. For many people, it is the ultimate old-fashioned diplomatic history. But it enthuses me for several reasons. First of all, it’s an extraordinary narrative. It reads magnificently and is a breathtaking horizon of events and people. Secondly, like me, she is obsessed with people. In the first chapter we have the funeral of Edward VII in 1910, which is... (Source)

Matt CalkinsThe best way to understand how the world resolves its conflicts and its tensions is by looking at how a conflict that has been studied thoroughly, like World War I, unfolded and resolved. Business is like this too. If anyone were to ever get to the heart of Coke vs. Pepsi, they would see a parade of mistakes in the same way World War I looks in retrospect—so many ways you could have done better. (Source)

Cécile FabreHe knows that his pleasure at a beautiful landscape, at the smell of good food, will forever be coloured by what the landscape looked like in the trenches, by the food that was cooked in the trenches. (Source)

Bethanye McKinney BlountThere's so much in this one about leadership, failures and how winners write history. (Source)

Jordan B PetersonA Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway https://t.co/dwAYVoKl3K, a book from my great books list https://t.co/AxBNX3QpMb (Source)

Julia EnthovenFor non-business, I’ve loved so many different books that it’s hard to pick a favorite. Recently, I’ve enjoyed The Art of Fielding and Americanah, and I love classics like A Farewell to Arms and Lord of the Flies. (Source)

Jordan Peterson[Jordan Peterson recommended this book on his website.] (Source)

James PurnellShe focuses on the meeting between Lloyd George, Georges Clemenceau and Woodrow Wilson that decided what the new boundaries would be for the world at Versailles in 1919. (Source)

Mike MaclayThe beautiful story she tells is how men of goodwill did try to make the Second World War impossible. (Source)

Tudor MihailescuIt’s vacation time so I got brave enough to start a sizeable trilogy by Ken Follett, The Century (Fall of Giants, Winter of the World, Edge of Eternity). The only expectation I had was to enjoy a good story, take my mind off into a different space. And it delivers, it’s a nice blend of history and fiction, an absorbing story throughout 20th century. (Source)

Wade DavisTo me, Testament of Youth is simply one of the finest, most heart-rending and most moving memoirs – not just of the Great War, but of any conflict. Women often spoke of the war and their losses through the metaphor of dance. Nancy Cooper famously said that “by the end of 1916 every boy that I had ever danced with was dead”. Vera Brittain simply said: “There was no one left to dance with.” (Source)

Wade DavisOf all the memoirs it is the most accessible, the best written and in many ways the most poignant of the memoirs that came from the soldiers. (Source)

Vanessa KingA beautiful and emotional story of love, resilience and meaning. (Source)

David MarquandI included this because I was hugely influenced both by the book and by actually visiting Verdun, which I did at the beginning of my work on my recent book. The point about Verdun is that it was the most unbelievably destructive battle ever fought on the European continent, west of the old Soviet Union. It had an enormous symbolic significance for me and also for a whole generation of French... (Source)

Will SelfFussell’s book brilliantly articulates many views which were inchoate in me before I read it. It’s ostensibly literary criticism, but it does much more than that. His thesis is the juxtaposition of the great powers marching off in August 1914, with their banners and tootling – “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” – and the reality of war. They expected a swift victory by Christmas, but got... (Source)

Wade DavisThis is the perfect book to end on. Every page is a revelation. It’s for anyone who wants to understand this notion that the war was the fulcrum of modernity. It was a turning point. The entire idea of the 19th century – which was an idea of progress, optimism and the notion that you can always better yourself economically, spiritually, socially – was crushed on the fields of Flanders. And in the... (Source)

John CusackGreat book ⬇️ RT @PuddockII: Wow. https://t.co/EF6Iyc0Kmc (Source)

Jonathan BoffWhat this book does is it views the war as a cultural phenomenon, rather than a military phenomenon. Eksteins is a cultural historian who thinks in terms of literature, music, plastic arts, and so on. (Source)

Brent GlassWhat the Civil War was about was mass killing on a scale that we had never ever dreamed of. (Source)

Cheryl StrayedI came upon this book when I was about 14. [It was] about a reality that was so far from my own. And yet when I was this teenager, I really could feel like the power of narrative, the power of inhabiting the life of another human. (Source)

Wade DavisJoseph is a friend of mine and l love this book. The other novel that could have been on the list is [Sebastian Faulks’s] Birdsong, which is a beautiful book, but because Sebastian has quite properly got a lot of attention, I thought it would be nice to choose something else. (Source)

Geoff DyerThis is a very recent book – it came out towards the end of 2011. He has uncovered and found out about the lives of 20 different people from different parts of the world – some are combatants, one is a doctor, there’s this cast of characters – and he narrates the war chronologically through their experiences of particular days. This gives a real sense both of people being at the mercy of history... (Source)

Wade DavisSomeone once asked me, if a fire burnt down my house what would be the one thing I would walk out with? And it’s a first-edition, leather-bound copy of this incredible book signed by my grandfather. My grandfather was himself a surgeon at a casualty clearing station on the Western Front. (Source)

Dan ChoiYes, it’s a book about Lawrence’s experiences during World War I, when he was stationed in North African and the Middle East. He writes about some of the lessons that he learnt from the military leaders from the Allies, and the Bedouin and tribal leaders. The book was influential to me because I can see his contribution as an Arabist. (Source)

Greg Dworkin@heshsson yes1 brilliant book, which also explains flu better than most other things you will read (Source)

Kyle Bass@Holykisses Remember the Great Influenza of 1918 (amazing book by Barry)...40-50 million died at a 10% kill rate. The higher the rate, the faster it is likely to burn itself out. 10% is a global pandemic nightmare. (Source)

Dave CollumI guess it is a good time to point out that "The Great Influenza" is a great book. If you think modern medicine would have mitigate this one, you haven't read the book. https://t.co/t4uHPgfLE6 (Source)

Mary BurkeyLovely War, to me, is one of those really strong and amazing representations of a multi-voiced production. It also is one of those crossover titles. As an adult, I loved it just as much as I think a teen would. It’s historical fiction (Source)

Andy McNabThis is a stunning novel. I love the English gentleman element of it. You’ve got this well-educated man who really doesn’t mind killing Germans but what he doesn’t understand is the reason why he’s killing them. As the war continued he began to realise that it was for political reasons – the military industrial complex. There was too much power play – the Allies couldn’t stop because they need... (Source)

Arnold SchwarzeneggerThere’s one book that I’ve given that it was just Christmas, that I’ve given away a lot of copies. This is a book about Winston Churchill by Boris Johnson. A very talented guy. (Source)

Benedict KingJohnson’s thesis is that Churchill may have had faults and made mistakes, but on all the big issues he called it right and that, as a politician, he had a unique combination of personal qualities – bravery, industry, eloquence and, when necessary, ruthlessness – that put him in a league of his own. The subtext bubbles up from every page: The Churchill Factor: Why I Have it in Spades. (Source)

Martin SixsmithHe’s the antithesis of Tolstoy in a way. August 1914 and the Red Wheel novels are a polemic against Tolstoy because he sees this Tolstoyan inevitability of history and he says: That’s wrong! People need to make a stand and try to change things for the better! (Source)

Francisco Perez Mackenna​This summer, Mackenna is learning more about the birth of behavioral economics, the psychology of white collar crime, and the restoration of American cities as locations of economic growth. (Source)

Jj Macnab@DanaSarrasin The problem with reading A Soldier of the Great War is that, when you're done, it's hard to choose your next book. Realistically, you're going to be disappointed. (Source)

Bill GatesMy interest in all aspects of the Vietnam War is the main reason I decided to pick up this book. By the time I finished it, I learned a lot not only about Vietnam but about the eight other major conflicts the U.S. entered between the turn of the 19th century and the 1970s. Beschloss’s broad scope lets you draw important cross-cutting lessons about presidential leadership. (Source)

Tom HanksOnce again, Beschloss captures our Presidents in terms both historic and human, showing that whoever holds the office will fearlessly—or fearfully—impact our world. (Source)

Charles FernyhoughWoolf is interested in the intersections between minds. She’s trying to show how minds bleed into each other. (Source)

Maria SvelandIt’s one of the saddest books I’ve ever read. I could really identify with Clarissa, this empty, poor person who is going out to find some flowers for a party. At the same moment, we are following her out into the beautiful morning as the story starts. It’s clear very soon that Clarissa is a woman who has lost her soul among all the duties and conventions of a boring marriage. That loss is so... (Source)

Gunhee ParkChurchill, A Life by Martin Gilbert is the most impactful book I've read this year. I generally enjoy reading biographies, as they're a great way to understand history in a more personal viewpoint, while also getting a glimpse of how influential figures overcame adversities and pursued their ambitions. Churchill's life stood out to me for a couple reasons. When you think about the personal... (Source)

Ryan HolidayIf you read one book about WWI, or one book of fiction about war, pick this one (Source)

Morten KringelbachThis book is about how it is that we create lives, how our well-being later on is very much shaped by early childhood. (Source)