The First World War

'Quite simply the best short history of the war in print . . . Strachan has emerged as the master of us all who write of war in English' Dennis Showalter

A brilliant and penetrating new history of the First World War by one of the world's foremost experts on the conflict. Reissued with a new introduction from the author.

The popular view of the First World War is dominated by cliché: young British soldiers, many of them budding poets, led to early and ghastly deaths in muddy wastes by incompetent generals for reasons that were seemingly futile. As this magisterial new one volume history of the war illustrates, however, the cliché is only part of the truth. Hew Strachan argues that the war had become a 'world war' long before the involvement of the United States, and that for those liberal countries struggling to defend their freedoms, the war was far from futile. Accessible, compelling and utterly convincing, this is modern history writing at its finest.

Accessible, compelling and utterly convincing, this is modern history writing at its finest.

Auteur

Professor Hew Strachan is the Chichele Professor of the History of War at Oxford University, and the author of several highly acclaimed books on military history.

Résumé
A brilliant and penetrating new history of the First World War by one of the world's foremost experts on the conflict. Reissued with a new introduction from the author. Hew Strachan is one of the world's foremost experts on the Great War of 1914-18. His on-going three-volume history of the conflict, the first of which was published in 2001, is likely to become the standard academic reference work: Max Hastings called it 'one of the most impressive books of modern history in a generation', while Richard Holmes hailed it as a 'towering achievement'. Now, Hew Strachan brings his immense knowledge to a one-volume work aimed squarely at the general reader. The inspiration behind the major Channel 4 series of the same name, to which Hew was chief consultant, THE FIRST WORLD WAR is a significant addition to the literature on this subject, taking as it does a uniquely global view of what is often misconceived as a prolonged skirmish on the Western Front. Exploring such theatres as the Balkans, Africa and the Ottoman Empire, Strachan assesses Britain's participation in the light of what became a struggle for the defence of liberalism, and show how the war shaped the 'short' twentieth century that followed it. Accessible, compelling and utterly convincing, this is modern history writing at its finest.