The First World War

"First of all, as a standalone book, this is the best, single, short introduction to the whole First World War. It’s a remarkable piece of concision, where Sir Michael has apparently absorbed all the research about the First World War and then boiled it down to 150 pages, which is remarkable. But it’s also partly because of who wrote it. Sir Michael Howard is a very fine historian by any measure, but certainly the greatest living military historian or historian of warfare. He’s someone who has fought—he won a medal in the Second World War; he’s thought about war all his life. He’s brought all of that thinking and experience and writing and advising policymakers and all sorts of other things and put it all into this one tiny little book about the First World War. So it’s incredibly rich and wise and balanced in the views that it takes. And because it also reflects all the research that was excellent when he wrote it, it’s the very best way for a beginner to get into the First World War. It’s a balanced, modern interpretation. Well quite. The First World War is a trees-and-forests war. There is so much of it, it’s very easy to get lost in the detail and lose sight of the bigger picture. Where he is so good is that he’s got a sense of what life was like for the ordinary soldier and yet can see the overall picture, the geopolitics that was at work and the strategy."