Crumb and Art Spiegelman” (Economist) comes a monumental, wordless depiction of the most infamous day of World War I.Launched on July 1, 1916, the Battle of the Somme has come to epitomize the madness of the First World War. Almost 20,000 British soldiers were killed and another 40,000 were wounded that first day, and there were more than one million casualties by the time the offensive halted. In The Great War, acclaimed cartoon journalist Joe Sacco depicts the events of that day in an extraordinary, 24-foot- long panorama: from General Douglas Haig and the massive artillery positions behind the trench lines to the legions of soldiers going “over the top” and getting cut down in no-man’s-land, to the tens of thousands of wounded soldiers retreating and the dead being buried en masse. Printed on fine accordion-fold paper and packaged in a deluxe slipcase with a 16-page booklet, The Great War is a landmark in Sacco’s illustrious career and allows us to see the War to End All Wars as we’ve never seen it before.

    Originally constructed in 1921 to hold one of the thousands of unidentified American soldiers lost in World War I, it now also contains unknowns from World War II and the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and receives millions of visitors each year who pay silent tribute.When the first Unknown Soldier was laid to rest in Arlington, General John Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force in WWI, seleted eight of America's most decorated, battle-hardened veterans to serve as Body Bearers. For the first time O'Donnell portrays their heroics on the battlefield one hundred years ago, thereby animating the Tomb by giving voice to all who have served. The Body Bearers appropriately spanned America's service branches and specialties. Their ranks include a cowboy who relived the charge of the light brigade, an American Indian who heroically breached mountains of German barbed wire, a salty New Englander who dueled a U-boat for hours in a fierce gunfight, a tough New Yorker who sacrificed his body to save his ship, and an indomitable gunner who, though blinded by gas, nonetheless overcame five machine-gun nests. Their stories slip easily into the larger narrative of America's involvement in the conflict, transporting readers into the midst of dramatic battles during 1917-1918 that ultimately decided the Great War.Celebrated military historian and bestselling author Patrick O'Donnell illuminates the saga behind the creation of the Tomb itself and recreates the moving ceremony during which it was consecrated and the eight Body Bearers, and the sergeant who had chosen the one body to be interred, solemnly united. Brilliantly researched, vividly told, The Unknowns is a timeless tale of heeding the calls of duty and brotherhood, and humanizes the most consequential event of the twentieth century, which still casts a shadow a century later.

    German engineers have fortified Montfaucon, a rocky butte in northern France, with bunkers, trenches, and giant guns. Following a number of bloody, unsuccessful attacks, the French deem Montfaucon impregnable and dub it the Little Gibraltar of the Western Front. Capturing it requires 1.2 million American soldiers, and 122,000 American casualties. But at the heart of the victory is a betrayal of Americans by Americans. Now William T. Walker tells the full story in his masterful Betrayal at Little Gibraltar.In the assault on Montfaucon, American forces became strangely bogged down, a delay that cost untold thousands of lives as the Germans defended their position with no mercy. Years of archival research demonstrate that the actual cause of the failure was the disobedience of a senior American officer, Lieutenant General Robert E. Lee Bullard, who subverted orders to assist the US 79th Division, under the command of General John J. Pershing. The result was unnecessary slaughter of American doughboys. Although several officers discovered the circumstances, Pershing protected Bullard—an old friend from West Point days—and covered up the story. The true account of the battle was almost lost to time.Betrayal at Little Gibraltar tells vivid human stories of the soldiers who fought to capture the giant fortress and push the American advance. Using unpublished first-person accounts—and featuring photographs, documents, and maps that place you in the action—Walker describes the horrors of World War I combat, the sacrifices of the doughboys, and the determined efforts of two participants to pierce the cover-up and to solve the mystery of Montfaucon. Like Stephen Ambrose and S.C. Gwynne, Walker is writing popular history at its best.

    Lawrence (1888-1935) first won fame for his writings and his participation in the British-sponsored Arab Revolt of WWI, but the adventurer known even in his day as "Lawrence of Arabia" is remembered today mostly as the subject of the 1962 film masterpiece based on his life. This splendid page-turner revitalizes this protean, enigmatic adventurer. That this colorful British scholar/Middle East warrior deserves a better fate is demonstrated amply in Michael Kordas' authoritative 784-page biography. Exciting, well-written, and relevant.699 pages of text, 762 with notes

    Focusing on a vast cast of characters -- from Dutch civilians to British and American strategists to common soldiers and commanders -- Ryan brings to life one of the most daring and ill-fated operations of the war. A Bridge Too Far superbly recreates the terror and suspense, the heroism and tragedy of this epic operation, which ended in bitter defeat for the Allies.

    But with the birth of the railroad in the early 1830s, the way wars were fought would change forever. In Engines of War, renowned expert Christian Wolmar tells the story of that transformation, examining all the engagements in which railways played a part from the Crimean War and American Civil War through both world wars, the Korean War, and the Cold War with its mysterious missile trains. He shows that the 'iron road' not only made armies far more mobile, but also greatly increased the scale and power of available weaponry. Wars began to be fought across wider fronts and over longer timescales, with far deadlier consequences. From armored engines with their swiveling guns to track sabotage by way of dynamite, railway lines constructed across frozen Siberian lakes and a Boer war ambush involving Winston Churchill, Engines of War shows how the railways - a fantastic generator of wealth in peacetime - became a weapon of war exploited to the full by governments across the world.

     Did events justify Lloyd George's claim in 1914 that the Kaiser could fall `by knocking away the props'; isolating Germany by defeating her partners? When Italy joined the Allies who was propping up whom? Were sideshows in the Balkans, Iraq and Palestine integral to the war's general strategy, or were they simply old imperial rivalries resumed by other means? A hundred years on, that moment in November 1918 when the fighting ceased on the Western Front is still remembered across nations: that symbolic eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. 'Victory 1918' examines the background to the Allied triumph and its aftermath. Might the Armistice in the forest of Compiegne have come sooner? Did American intervention have won the war and compromised the peace? How near did Germany come to denouncing the Armistice and resuming fighting in 1919? But 'Victory 1918' is not only concerned with what happened in France and Flanders. There were four armistices that autumn. The Great War was a global conflict, with battlefronts on three continents. Retracing the path to Compiegne through the four-year struggle allows the reader to consider if a broader strategic vision might have brought an earlier victory. 'Victory 1918' is a masterful survey of one of history's great turning points, and offers a fresh interpretation of the war which, more than any other, determined the character of the twentieth century. ALAN PALMER was Head of the History Department at Highgate School from 1953 to 1969, when he gave up his post to concentrate on historical writing and research. He has written some thirty narrative histories, historical reference books or biographies. In 1980 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

    He was credited with 80 victories in the air, before being shot down in disputed circumstances aged 26. In this autobiography Richthofen tells not only his own story but also that of his contemporaries, their duels in the sky, ever present danger, fame, honor and spiraling death.

    Pacific Fleet. Six months later, in a sea fight north of the tiny atoll of Midway, four Japanese aircraft carriers were sent into the abyss, a blow that destroyed the offensive power of their fleet. Pacific Crucible—through a dramatic narrative relying predominantly on primary sources and eyewitness accounts of heroism and sacrifice from both navies—tells the epic tale of these first searing months of the Pacific war, when the U.S. Navy shook off the worst defeat in American military history to seize the strategic initiative.

    In this wise and masterly work that he calls his “summa,” he revisits six battles of the past century and examines the strategies, leadership, preparation, and geopolitical goals of aggressors and defenders, to reveal the one trait that links them all: hubris.In Greek tragedy, hubris is excessive human pride that challenges the gods and ultimately leads to downfall. From the Battle of Tsushima in the Russo-Japanese War to Hitler’s 1940 invasion of Moscow to MacArthur’s disastrous advance in Korea, Horne shows how each of these battles was won or lost due to excessive hubris on one side or the other. In a sweeping narrative written with his trademark erudition and wit, Horne provides a meticulously detailed analysis of the ground maneuvers employed by the opposing armies in each battle. He also explores the strategic and psychological mindset of the military leaders involved to demonstrate how a devastating combination of human ambition and arrogance led to overreach. Making clear the danger of hubris in warfare, his insights are deeply relevant and hold important lessons for civilian and military leaders navigating today’s complex global landscape.A dramatic, colorful, stylishly written history, complete with a 16-page black-and-white photo insert and maps, Hubris is a brilliant and much-needed reflection on war from a master of his field.

    They had it all and, remarkably by modern standards, they were prepared to risk it all to fight a distant war in France. Driven by the belief that their membership in the American elite required certain sacrifice, schooled in heroism and the nature of leadership, they determined to be first into the conflict, leading the way ahead of America's declaration that it would join the war. At the heart of the group was the Yale flying club, six of whom are the heroes of this book. They would share rivalries over girlfriends, jealousies over membership in Skull and Bones, and fierce ambition to be the most daring young man over the battlefields of France, where the casualties among flyers were chillingly high. One of the six would go on to become the principal architect of the American Air Force's first strategic bomber force. Others would bring home decorations and tales of high life experiences in Paris. Some would not return, having made the greatest sacrifice of all in perhaps the last noble war. For readers of Flyboys, The Greatest Generation, or Flags Of Our Fathers, this patriotic, romantic, absorbing book is narrative military history of the best kind.

    At its end, it had claimed over seventeen million lives. It led to the collapse of nations, the abdication of monarchies and ended empires. Entire divisions of men perished in the pursuit of mere miles of uninhabitable wasteland –– towns were pulverized and millions displaced. It became a horrendous war of attrition, each side competing to kill as many of their foe as possible.Inside you will read about...✓ 1914 - Blood is spilled✓ 1915 - The dawn of the industrialized war✓ 1916 - Unrelenting bloodshed✓ 1917 - Revolution, revelation and catastrophe✓ 1918 - The great war at an endIt became the first industrialized war in history and introduced revolutionary technology into the fray. The airplane, the tank and the machine gun first saw action collectively during the conflict. It was also the first war in which poison gas was used to choke young men out of their trenches.This book is a timeline account of the important events that shaped the First World War. It details the events and causes that led the world to war. This book covers the milestone moments, important battles, and how the outcome changed the world forever.

    The panorama that Lincoln presents is broad but static. Chapters are devoted to descriptions of the miseries of the peasantry who endured famine in 1891 & deprivation thereafter--until Stolypin threw them some crumbs to ensure their support in suppressing the '05 revolutionary movement; to the archaic Russian nobility; to the misery & degradation of the urban masses; to the Romanovs; to the ill-fated war with Japan in '05 etc. The thing that seems to tie these topics together, in Lincoln's telling, is syphilis--which, we're told pointedly, infected a broader strata of the population in Russia than elsewhere. Prostitution statistics also get considerable play. Similarly, a chapter on the sexually liberated artistic fringe--which included Diaghilev, Blok & Belyi--makes much of the poet mystic Soloviev as a prophet of sexual pleasure & also ludicrously pronounces him "the 1st--& only--philosopher that 19th-century Russia produced." Little historical explanation is attempted, but he tends toward the view that what was lacking in prerevolutionary Russia was strong leadership: the assassination of Stolypin, the one strong leader produced by the old order, should have advised him otherwise. (Russian institutions collapsed as much from their dead weight as from anything else.) Altogether, he's provided many undigested facts & much garish color--but little else. For the serious general reader, this bears no comparison with Harrison Salisbury's Black Night, White Snow ('78).--Kirkus (edited)

    W. Crocker III (The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Civil War, Robert E. Lee on Leadership, etc.) now turns his guns on the epic story of America’s involvement in the First World War with his new book The Yanks Are Coming: A Military History of the United States in World War I. 2014 marks the centenary of the beginning of that war, and in Crocker’s sweeping, American-focused account, readers will learn: How George S. Patton, Douglas MacArthur, George C. Marshall (of the Marshall Plan), "Wild Bill" Donovan (future founder of the OSS, the World War II precursor to the CIA), Harry S. Truman, and many other American heroes earned their military spurs in "The Great War"Why, despite the efforts of the almost absurdly pacifistic administration of Woodrow Wilson, American involvement in the war was inevitableHow the First World War was "the War that Made the Modern World"—sweeping away most of the crowned heads of Europe, redrawing the map of the Middle East, setting the stage for the rise of communism and fascismWhy the First World War marked America’s transition from a frontier power—some of our World War I generals had actually fought Indians—to a global superpower, with World War I generals like Douglas MacArthur living to see, and help shape, the nuclear age"The Young Lions of the War" -- heroes who should not be forgotten, like air ace Eddie Rickenbacker, Sergeant Alvin York (memorably portrayed by Gary Cooper in the Academy Award–winning movie Sergeant York), and all four of Theodore Roosevelt’s sons (one of whom was killed) Stirring, and full of brilliantly told stories of men at war, The Yanks Are Coming will be the essential book for readers interested in rediscovering America’s role in the First World War on its hundredth anniversary.

    By the next day, no fewer than 5500 were wounded and just under 1900 were dead—a bloodbath that the Australian War Memorial describes as ‘the worst 24 hours in Australia's entire history'.Just days later, three Australian Divisions attacked German positions at nearby Pozières, and over the next six weeks they suffered another 23,000 casualties. Of that bitter battle, the great Australian war correspondent Charles Bean would write, ‘The field of Pozières is more consecrated by Australian fighting and more hallowed by Australian blood than any field which has ever existed . . .'Yet the sad truth is that, nearly a century on from those battles, Australians know only a fraction of what occurred. This book brings the battles back to life and puts the reader in the moment, illustrating both the heroism displayed and the insanity of the British plan. With his extraordinary vigour and commitment to research, Peter FitzSimons shows why this is a story about which all Australians can be proud. And angry.