Based on previously unused French and German sources, this challenging and controversial new analysis of the war on the Western front from 1914 to 1918 reveals how and why the Germans won the major battles with one-half to one-third fewer casualties than the Allies, and how American troops in 1918 saved the Allies from defeat and a negotiated peace with the Germans.

The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916 is the second book of Alistair Horne's trilogy, which includes The Fall of Paris and To Lose a Battle and tells the story of the great crises of the rivalry between France and Germany. The battle of Verdun lasted ten months. It was a battle in which at least 700,000 men fell, along a front of fifteen miles. Its aim was less to defeat the enemy than bleed him to death and a battleground whose once fertile terrain is even now a haunted wilderness. Alistair Horne's classic work, continuously in print for over fifty years, is a profoundly moving, sympathetic study of the battle and the men who fought there. It shows that Verdun is a key to understanding the First World War to the minds of those who waged it, the traditions that bound them and the world that gave them the opportunity. 'Verdun was the bloodiest battle in history ... The Price of Glory is the essential book on the subject'
Sunday Times 'It has almost every merit ... Horne sorts out complicating issues with the greatest clarity. He has a splendid gift for depicting individuals'
A.J.P. Taylor, Observer 'A masterpiece'
The New York Times 'Compellingly told ... Alastair Horne uses contemporary accounts from both sides to build up a picture of heroism, mistakes, even farce'
Sunday Telegraph 'Brilliantly written ... very readable; almost like a historical novel - except that it is true'
Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery One of Britain's greatest historians, Sir Alistair Horne, CBE, is the author of a trilogy on the rivalry between France and Germany, The Price of Glory, The Fall of Paris and To Lose a Battle, as well as a two-volume life of Harold Macmillan.

Jay Winter's powerful and substantial new study of the "collective remembrance" of the Great War offers a major reassessment of one of the critical episodes in the cultural history of the twentieth century. Using a wide variety of literary, artistic and architectural evidence, Dr. Winter looks anew at the ways, many of them highly traditional, in which communities endeavored to find collective solace after the carnage of the First World War. The result is a profound and moving book, of seminal importance for the attempt to understand the course of European history during the first half of the twentieth century.

The modern Middle East was forged in the crucible of the First World War, but few know the full story of how war actually came to the region. As Sean McMeekin reveals in this startling reinterpretation of the war, it was neither the British nor the French but rather a small clique of Germans and Turks who thrust the Islamic world into the conflict for their own political, economic, and military ends.

The Berlin-Baghdad Express tells the fascinating story of how Germany exploited Ottoman pan-Islamism in order to destroy the British Empire, then the largest Islamic power in the world. Meanwhile the Young Turks harnessed themselves to German military might to avenge Turkey's hereditary enemy, Russia. Told from the perspective of the key decision-makers on the Turco-German side, many of the most consequential events of World War I--Turkey's entry into the war, Gallipoli, the Armenian massacres, the Arab revolt, and the Russian Revolution--are illuminated as never before.

Drawing on a wealth of new sources, McMeekin forces us to re-examine Western interference in the Middle East and its lamentable results. It is an epic tragicomedy of unintended consequences, as Turkish nationalists give Russia the war it desperately wants, jihad begets an Islamic insurrection in Mecca, German sabotage plots upend the Tsar delivering Turkey from Russia's yoke, and German Zionism midwifes the Balfour Declaration. All along, the story is interwoven with the drama surrounding German efforts to complete the Berlin to Baghdad railway, the weapon designed to win the war and assure German hegemony over the Middle East.

World War I was one of the greatest upheavals in history, involving upwards of 70 million combatants--9 million of whom lost their lives--and setting off shock waves that were felt worldwide long after the Armistice of 1918. In The Experience of World War I, J.M. Winter marshalls a comprehensive range of historical materials, hundreds of vivid illustrations, and numerous eye-witness accounts to provide an illuminating and gripping chronicle of this cataclysmic event and its aftermath.
How did the assassination of one man, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, trigger such vast devastation? What was combat like for the common soldier? Why did the generals persist in large-scale offensives after catastrophic losses early in the war? What was the impact of the war on European politics, the world economy, and the arts? To answer these and myriad other questions, Winter examines the war year by year, describing the conflict as it was experienced by politicians, generals, soldiers and civilians. Illustrated with hundreds of color and black-and-white photographs, the book uncovers many intriguing aspects of the war: it reveals that soldiers in fact spent only two weeks per month in the front trenches, describes how the father of tycoon Rupert Murdoch broke the story of the disaster at Gallipoli, and outlines the unprecedented logistics problems the military faced (it took 20 boxcars of food per day to feed 17,000 men--and there were 5 million men in the British army alone). There is also a wealth of fascinating sidebar material covering a wide variety of secondary topics, from women's war poetry to the sinking of the LusitaniaT. The book is further enhanced by numerous first-hand accounts of life during the war, drawn from diaries, memoirs and other writings of both men and women, from all countries and social groups, and it also includes a full chronology, many full-color maps, and tables of essential data.
Combining political, military, and social history, this evocative account captures the Great War in all its complexity, from the bloody battles of Verdun, the Somme, and Passchendaele, to the flood of post-war literary and artistic works, including All Quiet on the Western Front and Jean Renoir's film La Grande Illusion.

Despite superior air and artillery power, British soldiers died in catastrophic numbers at the Battle of Somme in 1916. What went wrong, and who was responsible? This book meticulously reconstructs the battle, assigns responsibility to military and political leaders, and changes forever the way we understand this encounter and the history of the Western Front.
"A magisterial piece of scholarship. . . . It is a model of historical research and should do much to further our understanding of the Great War and how it was fought."--Contemporary Review
"Revisionist history at its best."--Library Journal (starred review)
"A major addition to the literature on the military history of the Great War" - Jay Winter

A rare and remarkable cultural history of World War I that unearths the roots of modernism

Dazzling in its originality, Rites of Spring probes the origins, impact, and aftermath of World War I, from the premiere of Stravinsky's ballet The Rite of Spring in 1913 to the death of Hitler in 1945. Recognizing that "The Great War was the psychological turning point . . . for modernism as a whole," author Modris Eksteins examines the lives of ordinary people, works of modern literature, and pivotal historical events to redefine the way we look at our past and toward our future.

A thirty-two volume boxed set, The Makers of the Modern World is a monumental look at all the signatories of the Versailles treaty.

Slight shelf wear to some of the dust jackets; else pristine and unread. Photos on request.

In the turmoil of World War I, T.E. Lawrence and a Jewish agronomist from Palestine imagined new nations -Arab and Israeli - rising from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire. Their arguments presaged the political battles of the Middle East today.