Best world war i history books according to redditors
We found 286 Reddit comments discussing the best world war i history books. We ranked the 97 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 286 Reddit comments discussing the best world war i history books. We ranked the 97 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
This is a legitimate area of study, and not for nothing. Conflict can ultimately result in a net positive to society as a whole even though it may be devastating to individual communities. It's an apt example for questioning one's support or denial of utilitarianism.
Edit: Apt is the more apt word in this case.
Edit 2: I'm in the middle of applying for jobs so I'm not going to get into the nitty gritty. It's just something that I studied while I was getting my anthro degree as we had several classes on war and disaster. Here is another source for anyone interested, which includes a link to the paper said researchers wrote. I'll leave it at that--back to it for me.
Because I looked up each of these, here are links for reference:
^ these are Amazon links, no referrals!
>C'mon the situation of the time was very easy to go wrong, just because one Serbian was nationalistic doesn't mean that factor was that important. Saying his actions on its own were that big of a reason for the war is gross oversimplification. The whole situation was rigged to explode at that time, overarching reasons being the many diffrent alliances between the European powers and the eagerness of some European rulers to go to war. I'd say nationalism was important for rallying the people to go to war though.
I'd have up disagree. The black hand had members and supporters in the upper echelons of the Serbian government and military sending then arms and turning a blind eye to a regionally destabilizing terrorist group who were calling for the annexation of Austro-hungarian territories. It wasn't one Serbian, but an active quasi government supported terrorist group running arms to separatists on the A-H side of the border.
When assessing in a limited timeframe the start of the first world war cannot solely be blamed on either Austria-Hungarian bellicosity or Serbian nationalism, but a mixture of the two. Arguing that the world was a ticking time bomb or whatever and anything could have set a war off, and there was an inevitable walk to war due to a web of alliances ignores the facts that no matter how likely one may posit that war was in the summer of 1914, the war which happened was started by a group of Serbian nationalist terrorists conspiring to assassinate the Austrian heir apparent in Sarajevo. While the wholesale expansion of the war was generally due to the rather cavalier actions of Germany and the alliances and such which drew Russia and Britain and company into the conflict, the initial war was a regional conflict between Austria Hungary and Serbia. When one relegates nationalism to simply rallying 'the people' to war one ignores the political changes and new nations which were created after the war, a result of the widespread nationalism at the time. I'd recommend this as a source on the beginning of the war. Hew Strachan is quite a good reflection of the current historiography of the war. If you're at all interested in the first world war's beginning this book is a must read.
Erwin Rommel DONT REAL!!!!!.
John Hay Beith (aka Ian Hay) The First Hundred Thousand and the sequel, All in It : K(1) Carries On are both available for free on Kindle. Both books are quick reads and well worth your time.
The first book is a thinly-fictionalized novel of Beith's own experiences in the 10th Battalion, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. Beith was one of the volunteers who joined Kitchener's (in)famous New Army after the outbreak of WWII. Hence the titles "The First Hundred Thousand" and "K(1)," which refer to the hundred thousand eager recruits who were formed into the first six divisions--the K1 Army Group--of Kitchener's New Army.
Beith's writing hasn't aged well in places, he makes some dated references and uses some slang that can be a little tricky to decipher, but even if you don't understand every word, there's still a great deal to love. Beith captures the humanity, the oddity, the cruelty, and the randomness of trench warfare with incredible deftness and tenderness. He is by turns funny and profound. Every one of his characters is allegedly fictional, but they're all very clearly portraits of real people Beith knew and served with. The First Hundred Thousand is based on events Beith personally witnessed and All in It is more second-hand, as success of the first novel had gotten Beith taken off the front line and sent to America on a propaganda tour.
Good-Bye to All That by Robert Graves' (better-known as the author of I, Claudius) is a much more sombre take on the war. While Beith's wartime novels were honest about the cost of war, they frame the war as a necessary struggle with necessary sacrifices. By contrast, Graves' postwar memoirs reflect the postwar bitterness of many Europeans about the high cost of the Great War. Graves' pulls no punches: the book is full of gas attacks, shell shock, war crimes, and an enormous amount of death.
War poet Siegfried Sassoon, who served with Graves and is portrayed (in somewhat controversial manner) in Graves' book also wrote his own books about his wartime experiences. Memoirs of a *F**ox-Hunting Man,** Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, and Sherston's Progress tell the story of a young man, George Sherston, a thinly fictionalized self-portrait of Sassoon. Like Sassoon, Sherston goes off to war, gets wounded, has a troubled recovery in hospital, and then gets sent back into the meatgrinder.
Another Graves acquaintance was medical officer J.C. Dunn, who wrote his own book: The War The Infantry Knew: 1914-1919: A Chronicle of Service in France and Belgium. Dunn's book takes the form a diary, chronicling the day-by-day life and death of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Welch Fusiliers (the same unit Sassoon and Graves served in).
For a French perspective, check out Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914-1918*. Barthas' diaries are frank, irreverent, and give a remarkable cross-section of fighting on the Western Front. By some miracle, Barthas survived the entire war from start to finish, even though nearly everyone her served with was killed in the fighting.
On the German side, Erwin Rommel's *Infantry Attacks***, is part-memoir and part-treatise. The most interesting parts are the ones closest to Rommel's own wartime experiences--where he discusses fighting in the rugged terrain of the Alps against the Italians.The book (and the hearty dose of self-promotion Rommel does in its pages) helped make Rommel a rising star in the German armed forces after WWI.
His book from WWI is Infantry Attacks and he never got a chance to edit his journals from WWII into its intended sequel but they were published by his son as The Rommel Papers.
I hear you. If you're interested in reading on the topic, this book by John Keegan is excellent. I read it once for a class in college and could not recommend it more highly.
Actually, the war happened because the Royals didn't have as much power as one might think. There was a network of unelected aristocrats and statesmen that dominated British imperialism who were much more powerful than any of the Royals. They even recruited King Edward VII to their cause. This network was centered on the Rhodes/Milner "Round Table" which Georgetown historian Carroll Quigley exposed. They viewed WW1 as a necessary political settlement, and worked to create a situation that would make war inevitable, recruiting pro-war elements in Russia who wanted a warm-water port and "Revanchist" anti-German elements in France. The Franco-Russian alliance was really organized by British imperialism.
For more info I highly recommend reading this book: https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-History-Secret-Origins-First/dp/1780576307
In Germany, the Kaiser was largely a figurehead and the country was really run by the "quartet" of army, landlords, industrialists, and bureaucratic interests. The Kaiser was anti-war but failed to talk down his ally (Austria) quickly enough to prevent War. That would prove to be his greatest mistake. In Russia, Nicholas II didn't want war, but the pro-war elements in his military and State department were too much to fight. The most significant Russian diplomat, Alexander Izvolsky, was best friends with King Edward VII.
The Pity of War by Niall Ferguson
The Great War by Peter Hart
The First World War by John Keegan
The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman
I find John Keegan's analysis (in his WW1 book) most convincing. The Schleiffen plan:
was out of date when it was implemented
badly underestimated Russian mobilization, not entirely but significantly due to racism and stereotyping
had no real contingency for British intervention in the west
was held in secret from the German diplomats
Agreed. I have also read Kershaw's The End and Fateful Choices and Ol' Adolf's single-mindedness comes through in them.
The First World War by Keegan is not a bad read.
The First World War by John Keegan is a really excellent overview of the war that's a really great read in its own right.
Infantry Attacks by Erwin Rommel is a good basis for beginning to learn about the larger picture of strategy. This is also a good read "Military Strategy: Principles, Practices, Historical Perspectives" by John M. Collins.
I thought this was a phenomenal book. It isn't as brief as the name implies and gives a detailed overview of the entire war down to each major battle and who was in charge and how they were fought. I enjoyed the writing style as well.
https://www.amazon.com/First-World-War-Short-Introduction/dp/0199205590
https://www.amazon.com/War-What-Good-Conflict-Civilization/dp/0374286000 is an interesting book (I hope I'm linking the right one).
It argues that every major disaster has been replaced by an era that is less violent than the era that preceded that disaster, with WW2 as the most recent example.
It is a bit short on explanations, but as always, all you can do is speculate since there is no way to test different hypothesis.
If you did read that article (which is possible in 24 minutes), you have about as good an understanding as you would from listening to Blueprint for Armageddon. Not as much nightmare imagery but more facts. If you still want to know more read this book., which also won't take as long as Carlin's podcast.
I highly recommend John Keegan's The First World War - it's quite long, but very approachable to someone not familiar with the period.
EDIT: Fixed the link. That's what happens when I try to look up books on Amazon on my phone.
Et forslag kunne være John Keegans bog om krigen:
https://www.amazon.com/First-World-War-John-Keegan/dp/0375700455
Alt af John Keegan er generelt værd at læse, hans klassiker "The face of battle" har også noget om Somme slaget.
For en detaljeret generel gennemgang af krigen set fra Tyskland/østrig ungarns synspunkt er Holger Herwigs bog her fantastisk:
https://www.amazon.com/First-World-War-Austria-Hungary-1914-1918/dp/0340573481
Here are all the local Amazon links I could find:
amazon.co.uk
amazon.ca
amazon.com.au
amazon.in
amazon.com.mx
amazon.de
amazon.it
amazon.es
amazon.com.br
amazon.nl
amazon.co.jp
Beep bloop. I'm a bot to convert Amazon ebook links to local Amazon sites.
I currently look here: amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.ca, amazon.com.au, amazon.in, amazon.com.mx, amazon.de, amazon.it, amazon.es, amazon.com.br, amazon.nl, amazon.co.jp, if you would like your local version of Amazon adding please contact my creator.
btw: I recommend this one:
http://www.amazon.de/Sleepwalkers-How-Europe-Went-1914/dp/0141027827/ref=sr_1_1?s=books-intl-de&ie=UTF8&qid=1406045842&sr=1-1&keywords=christopher+clark
The First World War by John Keegan https://www.amazon.com/dp/0375700455/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_RKNLxbX912QTD
I also have this absolutely monstrous six volume set: The Great War: The Illustrated History of the First World War: 6 Volume Set https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000OTDY5A/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_YMNLxbPYYR9FQ
That one might be a little more than you're looking for though.
I checked em out...
["The Military Revolution" ]
(http://www.amazon.com/Military-Revolution-Innovation-Rise-1500-1800/dp/0521479584/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1396059549&sr=1-4&keywords=Geoffrey+Parker)
by
[Geoffrey Parker]
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Parker_(historian))
["Battles of the 30 years war"]
(http://www.amazon.com/Battles-Thirty-Years-War-Contributions/dp/0313320284/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1396059822&sr=1-1&keywords=battles+of+the+30+years+wars)
by
[William Guthrie]
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Guthrie_(historian))
["Warfare in the 17th century"]
(http://www.amazon.com/Warfare-Seventeenth-Century-Smithsonian-History/dp/006089170X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1396060084&sr=1-1&keywords=Warfare+in+the+17th+century)
by
[John Childs]
(http://www.worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n82-90965/)
["History of the art of war"]
(http://www.amazon.com/Medieval-Warfare-History-Art-War/dp/0803265859/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1396066515&sr=1-1&keywords=History+of+the+art+of+war)
by
[Hans Delbruck]
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Delbruck)
["Infantry Attacks"]
(http://www.amazon.com/Infantry-Attacks-Marshall-Erwin-Rommel/dp/1607963353/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1396066713&sr=1-1&keywords=Infantry+Attacks)
by
[Erwin Rommel]
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Rommel)
["Achtung Panzer"]
(http://www.amazon.com/Achtung-Panzer-Cassell-Military-Classics/dp/0304352853/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1396066882&sr=1-1&keywords=Achtung+Panzer)
by
[Heinz Guderian]
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinz_Guderian)
Free here: http://www.amazon.com/On-origin-species-Charles-Darwin-ebook/dp/B008478VE8
That great river of books that sucks away my money says I should have a used hardback edition in about 10 days. I would not look for a book report for, oh, maybe 6 months or so. I'll repay the "favor" this way. A Short History of the World is perhaps bordering on fluff compared to what you recommended, but it is an overview that may lead to other research. Perhaps more interesting to me are a couple of offbeat ones by Tom Standage: A History of the World in 6 Glasses, and An Edible History of Humanity. They sorta slip interesting historical factoids into your brain without it seeming like your having to work at learning history.
Try the following:
http://www.amazon.com/Beauty-Sorrow-Intimate-History-First/dp/030759386X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1322721086&sr=8-1
The First World War by John Keegan.
https://www.amazon.com/Infantry-Attacks-Marshall-Erwin-Rommel/dp/1607963353/189-2702265-0313642?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0
Infantry Attacks by the great Rommel himself. My Grandfather had a copy of it, it's a fascinating book.
For fiction go and read All Quiet on the Western Front.
I am currently reading Now It Can Be Told, by Philip Gibbs, a war correspondent during the war. In this, he tells tales that he couldn't get past the censors during the war. Tales of heroism, cowardice, futility, injuries, death, and the daily life of the men, women, and children of the war zone.
This will most likely get deleted:
I am currently reading a book by Ian Kershaw which (among other things) touches your exact question:
https://www.amazon.com/Fateful-Choices-Decisions-Changed-1940-1941/dp/0143113720/ref=sr_1_10?keywords=ian+kershaw&qid=1564048284&s=gateway&sr=8-10
​
One chapter explains why hittler decided to attack, another one why Staling choose to ignore all warnings about the coming attack
The First World War by John Keegan
Okay history class for you, the heir to the throne of austria was killed by a jugoslav terrorist. Thats how the whole shit started. It was taken by austria (this is not germany and never was germany) as a reason to start a war against Serbia, then Russia came into play, then austria called germany its ally for help, russia hey stop mobilizing your troops or we will join the fight...., a lot of more allies to each side joined one after another all escalating the situation even more, all with their own special interests. Every fucking european ruler of this time period was involved and many could have prevented it to escalate even more. So the victors gave now the fault for the war to germany alone .... God the whole continent was ruled at this time by assholes on thrones, who were going to war for shitty reasons. Do you think the Brits got their colonies with being nice to the inhabitans, the difference was just that they won.
This is a good read about ww1
Read origin of species it is free on amazon https://www.amazon.com/origin-species-Charles-Darwin-ebook/dp/B008478VE8/ref=mt_kindle?_encoding=UTF8&me=
I can recommend this if you are interested in an extensive account of the events that finally lead to WWI: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sleepwalkers-How-Europe-Went-1914/dp/0141027827/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1498756682&sr=8-1&keywords=the+sleepwalkers
It's a free digital book on Amazon. Read it on the pc or a kindle.
http://www.amazon.com/On-origin-species-Charles-Darwin-ebook/dp/B008478VE8
Thanks! I'm quite interested in the South-Eastern European region as well, as I've gathered that the relationship between Austria-Hungary and Serbia is quite important (obviously).
Are you familiar with The Long Fuse by Lafore?
"World War One: A short history (link) by Norman Stone (2010)"
Have not read that one, but Norman Stone also wrote a book on the Eastern Front some years ago that I think was very good and it is also the one book that everyone always mention as The Book to read about the eastern front (perhaps because it is the only book on that topic in English, at least that I know of?).
Edit: this one: http://www.amazon.com/Eastern-Front-1914-1917-Norman-Stone/dp/0140267255
What do you recommend when wanting to get a big picture of the Eastern Front? I've had my eye on Eastern Front 1914-1917 by Norman stone.
Four recent books (one of which I haven't looked at personally) have addressed this matter in varying capacities, and while none of the three I've seen is perfect all four each have considerable merits.
Adam Hochschild's To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 (2011) is an admirable attempt to integrate the story of objectors, resisters, pacifists and the like into the already well-established tableau of the war's history. It is a less than objective work, to put it mildly -- the tone is often one of outrage rather than dispassionate provision of facts. Still, the war seems to bring this out in people in a way that others do not, so this is scarcely a surprising feature. Still a good start, though; broadly focused on Great Britain and British colonies.
Louisa Thomas' Conscience: Two Soldiers, Two Pacifists, One Family (2011) examines the tensions involved in non-combatant decisions on the American home front, with particular focus upon her great grandfather, Norman Thomas, who refused to fight at a time when two of his brothers had chosen otherwise. More of a meditation than an outright history book, but still quite interesting.
Peter Englund's fascinating narrative history, The Beauty and the Sorrow (2011), contains about twenty interwoven accounts of the war from a variety of perspectives, many of them on the home front. It's more determinedly international than the other two books I've mentioned, but may be less completely useful to you in that it jumps around considerably to provide a wider view.
For a specifically Australian view (albeit in a work I've not yet read, and probably won't be reading), check out Philip Payton's Regional Australia and the Great War (2012), which focuses on soldiers from a specific part of Australia and how both they and their home front contemporaries fared. If any book is likely to have at least something in it that will specifically help you, it's probably this one!
A Short History of World War I by James L. Stokesbury is a fantastic book. I finished it a few months ago and, in my mind, no other author is able to cover so much of the conflict in a single, concise volume with so much insight.
He doesn't mince words, either. If a general was an idiot, Stokesbury will call him an idiot. If a campaign was stupid, he'll say so. Needless to say, because it was World War I and we have hindsight, there is a lot of this, but it's very enjoyable and touching and a great work of history.
From an Amazon review:
> Unlike some authors, Stokesbury pulls no punches. When a commander is dense, stupid, or even worse, he tells it like it is. One of my favorite lines from the book goes something like (I don't have my copy at hand) `General ... was appointed to command the ... army, and was expected to do nothing, which he did exceedingly well.' This gives you a flavor of his writing style. This is not to say that Stokesbury is flippant, just direct.
Well, starting with WW1.. there was a popular argument that said war was impossible because economies had become too intertwined. That global capitalism had made war unprofitable. The book [The Great Illusion](The Great Illusion A Study of the Relation of Military Power to National Advantage https://www.amazon.com/dp/161203652X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_ohsJybGWTPVJ0) popularized this view.
I like the "short history on" books.
A Short History of World War II.
A Short History of World War I.
A Short History of the Korean War.
A Short History of the American Revolution.
I've found them to be really easy to read and exciting.
DON'T READ GUNS OF AUGUST NO NO NO. Unless you want to read about the arboreal history of the trees that were cut down to make the paper used on a telegraph sent to an obscure Prussian corporal in 1893.
Read this.
http://www.amazon.com/First-World-War-Short-Introduction/dp/0199205590
I remember reading J.M. Roberts' A Short History of the World a dozen or so years ago. It was awesome because it really did keep it simple and you never felt like it bogged down anywhere - which must be an incredible task given the breadth of subject.
I would consider it a good primer or first read of world history. You can always find something more detailed or specific further down the road.
Russia told the Serbs to accept the ultimatum. Serbia accepted nine points out of ten of the ultimatum. Which was specifically designed by Austria to be rejected so that Austria could have their war. And yes, I actually would be surprised to see how much they tried for a war not to happen, seeing as most of those in power both in Austria, with regards to Serbia, and Germany, with regards to Russia, explicitly wanted war against those countries at the time.
Honestly, actual history books such as The First World War by Hew Strachan, while not perfect, explain what lead up to the war quite well. You can start with Volume 1, which covers the beginning of the conflict.
The new hotness in WWI history right now is "Sleepwalkers", but that has a lot in common with the scope of Catastrophe 1914. It's mainly focused on the lead-up to the war, beginning with the turmoil in Eastern Europe around the start of the 20th Century and zooming into much more in-depth diplomatic history about why the war actually started. It's excellent (if you're into that sort of thing) and offers a long, gripping tick-tock that is much more up-to-date than the classic "Guns of August".
If you're interested in reading about the military conflict itself, it's hard to go wrong with Keegan's The First World War. It's a broad overview history of the war that is very readable and might give you some ideas of topics worth further diving into.
A Short History of the World by J. M. Roberts. Praised by The Economist, some Christian association, NY Times, etc. Boring in parts (it's tough to get excited about Sumerian civilization) but overall very good explanation of human history.
http://www.amazon.com/Short-History-World-John-Roberts/dp/019511504X/ref=pd_cp_b_1
Now it Can be Told by Philip Gibbs. He was a reporter on the Great War and published in 1920. It's a visceral look at the Western Front and his first-hand account on the British Expeditionary Force and their travails. It is a raw take by an eyewitness to the events on all the carnage of trench warfare that he was not allowed to report on. It's heartbreaking, captivating, a tearjerker, and the best WWI book out there.
Best of all, the digital format is free on Amazon.
The back cover: "In this book I have written about some aspects of the war which, I believe, the world must know and remember, not only as a memorial of men's courage in tragic years, but as a warning of what will happen again--surely--if a heritage of evil and of folly is not cut out of the hearts of peoples. Here it is the reality of modern warfare not only as it appears to British soldiers, of whom I can tell, but to soldiers on all the fronts where conditions were the same."
/r/AskHistorians provides a Book List in their Wiki including [WWI] (https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/books/wwi) books.
I listened to "Blueprint for Armageddon" and liked it. Dan Carlin cites John Keegan a lot who wrote The First World War.
I personally like Margaret MacMillan's books The War that Ended Peace and Paris 1919 which deal with the political steps toward the war and the attempts at a permanent peace, respectively.
For an accessible book that represents the expanse of WWI, I love Eugene Rogan's The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East.
No its not.
Its a term that the Globalists don't want you to use. Maybe you should do some reading up on the Globalists before throwing around racist smears?
Here's some good articles to get you started:-
What everyone should know about the Oligarchs plot to control the world Part 1. The Rise of the Round Tables (1864-1945) https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-05-03/origins-deep-state-north-america-part-1
The WWI Conspiracy https://www.activistpost.com/2018/11/the-wwi-conspiracy.html
Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-History-Secret-Origins-First/dp/1780576307
https://www.amazon.com/War-What-Good-Conflict-Civilization/dp/0374286000
Worth a read. He went into his research thinking war was the scourge of humanity and came away from it realizing it has conglomerated humanity in to larger, more stable, more productive, and yes safer societies.
Here's an amazon links for everything I can think of:
[The Burning of the World by Bela Zombory-Moldovan] (https://www.amazon.com/Burning-World-Memoir-Review-Classics/dp/1590178092)
[Poilu by Louis Barthas] (https://www.amazon.com/Poilu-Notebooks-Corporal-Barrelmaker-1914-1918/dp/0300191596/ref=pd_sim_b_22?ie=UTF8&refRID=08182FWK7NN6N9QSEAF7)
[Infantry Attacks by Erwin Rommel] (https://www.amazon.com/Infantry-Attacks-Marshall-Erwin-Rommel/dp/1607963353)
[Outside Verdun by Arnold Zweig] (https://www.amazon.com/Outside-Verdun-Arnold-Zweig/dp/1908754524)
[Storm of Steel by Ernst Juenger] (https://www.amazon.com/Storm-Steel-Penguin-Classics-Deluxe/dp/0142437905)
[Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves] (https://www.amazon.com/Good-Bye-That-Autobiography-Robert-Graves/dp/0385093306)
This is a huge period of time, early modern and modern.
The 16th century is defined by religious wars, as is the first half of the 17th. I'm not sure of a good source on the Peasant Wars and such but I do know the absolute megalith you should get for the 30 Years' War (1618-1648) which is honestly the most important thing you could possibly study between 1492 - 1815 (the Early Modern Era traditionally). Yes, even more than the Napoleonic Wars. The greatest volume I've found on this is The Thirty Years' War: Europe's Tragedy by Peter Wilson.
I can not emphasize this enough: I know many people who consider the Early Modern Era to start in 1648 because of how fucking important the conclusion of this war was and what this war represented. It was the last religious war in Europe, it absolutely obliterated political lines and changed everything forever. It harkened the downfall of the top dogs at the time of Sweden, Poland, the Hapsburgs, the Ottomans, and Spain. This is a fucking important war.
Another great war on probably the most tumultuous area of the Early Modern Era is The Northern Wars: War, State and Society in Northeastern Europe, 1558 - 1721 by Robert Frost. If you want a book (that is pricey as shit) on arguably the most important man of the Early Modern Era and who brought France into greatness and basically started Absolutism I'd check out The Wars of Louis XIV: 1667 - 1714.
In terms of the Napoleonic Wars...well...it's a fucking hard topic to cover. There's not a lot of good general histories out there. I'll page /u/DonaldFDraper and ask him to come in if he has anything particular he'd like to recommend but preemptively I'll recommend Bayonets of the Republic: Motivation And Tactics In The Army Of Revolutionary France, 1791-94 written by that same dude who wrote the Wars of Louix XIV. Ultimately you can't separate the military history from the Napoleonic period very easily so you're going to get a bit of both whether you like it or not (but I hope you do! It's a great period of study w.r.t. military history). While I haven't read it I have heard French Society in Revolution, 1789-1799 by David Andress is a good read. However my principal source on the Napoleonic Wars is The Campaigns of Napoleon by David Chandler. Yeah it's expensive, go find it cheap (or free) if you can online (because it does exist, found it before I actually buckled down and bought it) but it is the source on Napoleon. This should be the last book you get though and only if this period becomes a fascination with you.
After that I'd recommend The Franco-Prussian War: The German Invasion of France 1870-1871 by Michael Howard and to help dispel some myths and give a general overview of the common perceptions of WWI The Great War: Myth and Memory by Dan Todman. If you want an overview of events leading up to the war along with the opening year or so I'd recommend the absolute megalith The First World War: Volume I: To Arms by Hew Strachan. This is the book you should get on your introduction to the First World War along with Myth and Memory. Read this one first though.
John Keegan's The First World War is a well written one-volume history.
I don't know how badly out of date it is, since it was written in 2000, but Keegan is a top-notch military historian.
I don't know how "basic" of an overview you're looking for. This is a decent video, that is extremely high level. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XPZQ0LAlR4
I also read a very nice, and short, book: *The First World War: A Very Short Introduction
I'm actually in the middle of First World War by John Keegan and he makes the same claim (except for Britain). I don't know what his primary sources are though.
I can recommend two. 1) politics https://www.amazon.com/Sleepwalkers-How-Europe-Went-1914/dp/0061146668. Military https://www.amazon.com/First-World-War-John-Keegan/dp/0375700455.
[This] (https://www.amazon.com/First-World-War-Short-Introduction/dp/0199205590) and [This] (https://www.amazon.com/World-War-II-Introduction-Introductions/dp/019968877X) are your best bets as many professors use these in their classes.
I highly recommend this book to anyone on T_D, it puts a lot of current events into context:
https://www.amazon.com/Fateful-Choices-Decisions-Changed-1940-1941/dp/0143113720
and then if you want to understand how the Obama and Clinton cabal think then read this
https://www.amazon.com/Crime-Punishment-Fyodor-Dostoyevsky/dp/0486415872/
IMHO, the Evil Empire is the NWO. They have no global boundaries though they're primarily based in Europe and the US. They, through informal connections, formal organizations (Bilderberg Group, CFR, TriLat Commission, UN, NATO, etc) and secret societies work together to control gvts, the banks (via Fed, central banks), intel agencies like CIA/Mossad, media, and are pushing into large corporations (like Google). Their goal is 1-world gvt, and their methods to achieve it are ruthless. They are behind 9/11, The War on Terror, the recent coup in Bolivia, etc. Their economic strategy is to push for the capitalist system to be dominated by a few large players in each industry while pushing out small business. Then, they can push for their people to get on the boards and eventually control them. One example is Rex Tillerson & Exxon.
When countries oppose them (like Libya, Iran, etc), they are punished mercilessly.
A book that explains it in detail is Charlie Robinson's The Octopus of Global Control:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073VZT1R8/
They are also behind many of the major wars in the last 150 years. One example I can give of this is WWI.. which had been planned by Rothschild & his British cronies for 30yrs before WWI, as explained in this great book "Hidden History":
https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-History-Secret-Origins-First/dp/1780576307
The Long Fuse by Laurence Lafore
> As Yang says, dictatorships [are] bad because they cause people to abdicate civic responsibility and blame a failed government on only the dictator.
In the context where just saying the wrong things gets you a one way trip to a forced labor death camp??
And the original comment was made because the democracy he served under was suicidally incompetent. A concept I'm being reminded of as I read Winston Churchill's history of WWI, particularly the part on 1915 right now.
Archives for the links in comments:
----
I am Mnemosyne 2.1, ERROR 404 flavortext not found. ^^^^/r/botsrights ^^^^Contribute ^^^^message ^^^^me ^^^^suggestions ^^^^at ^^^^any ^^^^time ^^^^Opt ^^^^out ^^^^of ^^^^tracking ^^^^by ^^^^messaging ^^^^me ^^^^"Opt ^^^^Out" ^^^^at ^^^^any ^^^^time
John Hay Beith's (aka Ian Hay) The First Hundred Thousand and the sequel, All in It: K(1) Carries On are both available for free on Kindle. Both books are quick reads and well worth your time.
The first book is a thinly-fictionalized novel of Beith's own experiences in the 10th Battalion, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. Beith was one of the volunteers who joined Kitchener's (in)famous New Army after the outbreak of WWII. Hence the titles "The First Hundred Thousand" and "K(1)," which refer to the hundred thousand eager recruits who were formed into the first six divisions--the K1 Army Group--of Kitchener's New Army.
Beith's writing hasn't aged well in places, he makes some dated references and uses some slang that can be a little tricky to decipher, but even if you don't understand every word, there's still a great deal to love. Beith captures the humanity, the oddity, the cruelty, and the randomness of trench warfare with incredible deftness and tenderness. He is by turns funny and profound. Every one of his characters is allegedly fictional, but they're all very clearly portraits of real people Beith knew and served with. The First Hundred Thousand is based on events Beith personally witnessed and All in It is more second-hand, as the success of the first novel had gotten Beith taken off the front line and sent to America on a propaganda tour.
Good-Bye to All That by Robert Graves' (better-known as the author of I, Claudius) is a much more sombre take on the war. While Beith's wartime novels were honest about the cost of war, they frame the war as a necessary struggle with necessary sacrifices. By contrast, Graves' postwar memoirs reflect the postwar bitterness of many Europeans about the high cost of the Great War. Graves' pulls no punches: the book is full of gas attacks, shell shock, war crimes, and an enormous amount of death.
War poet Siegfried Sassoon, who served with Graves and is portrayed (in somewhat controversial manner) in Graves' book also wrote his own books about his wartime experiences. Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, and Sherston's Progress tell the story of a young man, George Sherston, a thinly fictionalized self-portrait of Sassoon. Like Sassoon, Sherston goes off to war, gets wounded, has a troubled recovery in hospital, and then gets sent back into the meatgrinder.
Another Graves acquaintance was medical officer J.C. Dunn, who wrote his own book: The War The Infantry Knew: 1914-1919: A Chronicle of Service in France and Belgium. Dunn's book takes the form a diary, chronicling the day-by-day life and death of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Welch Fusiliers (the same unit Sassoon and Graves served in).
For a French perspective, check out Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914-1918. Barthas' diaries are frank, irreverent, and give a remarkable cross-section of fighting on the Western Front. By some miracle, Barthas survived the entire war from start to finish, even though nearly everyone her served with was killed in the fighting.
On the German side, Erwin Rommel's Infantry Attacks, is part-memoir and part-treatise. The most interesting parts are the ones closest to Rommel's own wartime experiences--where he discusses fighting in the rugged terrain of the Alps against the Italians.The book (and the hearty dose of self-promotion Rommel does in its pages) helped make Rommel a rising star in the German armed forces after WWI.
One set of books which do a great job covering the war day by day from a personal perspective are Matt Kersley's 1914: These Are Our Masters and 1915: The Pale Battalions. He does a great jobs borrowing from Barthas and other WWI diarists to weave a narrative of how the conflict unfolded for individuals around the world.
So, clearly nobody commenting and blindly up-voting realizes this is just an except from this book by a Stanford classics professor. Here's a good summary instead of a picture with an incendiary headline, and here's an excerpt from that summary (just read the summary) so you can see that this is actually a non-fiction history book... It's frankly embarrassing that this is being up-voted.
>In the Stone Age, humans were a rough lot. When people 10,000 years ago disagreed, they usually solved their arguments without violence; but when they did decide to use force, they faced far fewer constraints than the citizens of functioning modern states. Violence was normally on a small scale, in homicides, vendettas, and raids, but because populations were also tiny, the steady drip of killing took an appalling toll. By many estimates, 10 to 20% of Stone Age humans died at other people's hands.If we fast-forward to the 20th century, we see a stunning contrast. The century suffered world wars, genocides, and nuclear attacks, not to mention civil strife, riots, and murders. Altogether, we killed a staggering 100-200 million of our own kind. But between 1900 and 2000, roughly 10 billion lives were lived -- meaning that just 1-2% of the world's population died violently.
So if you were lucky enough to be born in the 20th century, your risk of dying violently was just one-tenth of that in the Stone Age; and since 2000, the United Nations tells us, the risk of violent death has fallen even further, to 0.7%.
These are astonishing statistics, but the explanation is more astonishing still. In perhaps the greatest paradox in history, what made the world safer was war itself.
What happened, it seems, is that starting about 10,000 years ago, the winners of wars began incorporating the losers into larger societies. The victors then found that the only way to make these larger societies work was by developing stronger governments; and one of the first things these governments had to do, if they wanted to stay in power, was suppress violence among their subjects. he men who ran these governments cracked down on killing not because they were saints, but because well-behaved subjects were easier to govern and tax than angry, murderous ones. States that suppressed violence within their borders tended to grow; those that did not, tended to fail.
War is surely the worst possible way to create larger, more peaceful societies, but the depressing truth is that it seems to be pretty much the only way people have found.
damn the modern era where I can get the same book for free.
http://www.amazon.com/On-origin-species-ebook/dp/B008478VE8/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1343694937&sr=1-2&keywords=on+the+origin+of+species