World War One

The First World War was the overwhelming disaster from which everything else in the twentieth century stemmed. Fourteen million combatants died, four empires were destroyed, and even the victors’ empires were fatally damaged. In World War One, Norman Stone, one of the world’s foremost historians of the twentieth century, has achieved the almost impossible task of writing a brief volume encompassing this epic war. A captivating, brisk history whose brevity belies its wealth of detail, World War One is Stone’s masterful retelling of the war that created the modern world.

• “Smooth, efficient and highly readable… full of fascinating asides for those who thought that European history could hold no more surprises for them.”
  Wall Street Journal
• “Only a virtuoso could, in the space of a long essay, cover the fighting on all its fronts and still find room for high politics, trenchant comment and colorful detail.”
  Financial Times (Book of the Year)
• “A corker of a book… brings more clarity to this complex, much-written about subjects that some historians manage to do in books three or four times as long.”
  History Today
• “[Norman Stone is] an exceptionally gifted scholar with an enviable command of languages, an originality of mind and an unconventional approach that illuminates everything he has written… splendid stuff.”
  Sir Michael Howard, Sunday Times
• “[World War One] fizzes with life and sparkles with aphorism tossed off with aplomb, along with condemnations and commendations alike… Delivered with magisterial, even arrogant, authority… Stone’s introduction of the war… is thought provoking, readable, and thoroughly enjoyable.”
  Sunday Telegram
•  “Stone’s book is a good overview of the war and worth reading.”
  Military Review
• “The narrative has a rich sense of immediacy, accentuated with intimate details, as if Stone knew each figure personally.… Throw in a handful of references to poems, films, and novels both contemporary and modern, as Stone does, add dashes of jaunty, scornful judgments, and the result is indeed a literary tour de force. The phrase ‘cannot put it down’ does indeed come to mind.”
  H-Net Reviews