Showing titles in World War I

On 1 May 1915, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool. The passengers - including a record number of children and infants - were anxious. Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone. For months, its...

As the depression worsens, a distant war draws near. Dan O'Brian finds he is once again embroiled with the inner conflicts he had hoped were far behind him after returning from World War I. Dan holds a strong conviction that the United States should stay out of the new war-because this time it is his son, Cory, whose life could be threatened by a foreign menace. But convictions can change. Through his work as a musician, Dan finds an unlikely friend in Josh Brown, a man who challenges Dan's view of the world. And though both men share a common tragic link to the past, events of the future ...

A NOVEL OF WAR, WINGS, AND THE BONDS THAT SURVIVE 1913, MANCHESTER. Arthur Howarth's world is measured in mill shifts and shillings—until he climbs into the backyard loft he built himself. Here, among his racing pigeons, he masters a quiet science of wind, seed, and instinct. Here, he is a king. 1916, THE SOMME. That science is now a weapon. Transferred to the Army Pigeon Service, Arthur finds himself in a mobile loft at the edge of hell. His new comrades are not soldiers, but birds: veterans with wary eyes, skittish youths, and Shadow—a captured German hen with a preternatural will to ...

World War I, or the Great War, was believed to be "the war to end all wars". Because of the incredible extent of destruction and the staggering number of wounded and dead, even those who lived through it could scarcely comprehend its horror. Beginning in 1914, alliances between powerful nations soon plunged the world into a global conflict. Fighting - including miserable trench warfare - broke out in practically every corner of Europe and spread around the world to Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.

Launched in 1914, two years after the ill-fated voyage of her sister ship, RMS Titanic, the Britannic was intended to be superior to her tragic twin in every way. But war intervened and in 1915 she was requisitioned as a hospital ship. Just one year later, while on her way to collect troops wounded in the Balkans campaign, she fell victim to a mine laid by a German U-boat and tragically sank in the middle of the Aegean Sea. There her wreck lay, at a depth of 400 feet, until it was discovered fifty-nine years later by legendary explorer Jacques Cousteau.

On a cold winter morning, Jeff Power was lighting a fire in his remote Arizona cabin when he heard a noise, grabbed his rifle, and walked out the front door. Someone in the dark shouted, “Throw up your hands!” Shots rang out from inside and outside the cabin, and when it was all over, Jeff’s sons, Tom and John, emerged to find the sheriff and his two deputies dead and their father mortally wounded. Arizona’s Deadliest Gunfight describes an impoverished family that wanted nothing to do with modern civilization.

If the Wright brothers' 1903 flights in Kitty Hawk marked the birth of aviation, World War I can be called its violent adolescence - a brief but bloody era that completely changed the way planes were designed, fabricated, and flown. The war forged an industry that would redefine transportation and warfare for future generations.

Lawrence of Arabia is one of the most iconic figures of the First World War, seen by many as a heroic and romantic guerrilla leader in a period of savage and deeply impersonal industrial warfare. While Lawrence himself has been the subject of many biographies and an award-winning film, the context of his war in the desert, and his ideas on war itself, are less well-known. Lawrence of Arabia on War is a study of those ideas and of his campaign of irregular warfare which has informed tactical theory and decision-making down to the present day.

In the early months of World War I, on Christmas Eve, men on both sides of the trenches laid down their arms and joined in a spontaneous celebration. Despite orders to continue shooting, the unofficial truce spread across the front lines. Even the participants found what they were doing...

"The River War" is an account by Winston S. Churchill, based on his experiences as a British Army officer, during the Mahdist War (1881- 99) in the Sudan. He tells the story of the British imperial involvement in the Sudan, and the Mahdi War between the British forces, led by Lord Kitchener, and the Dervish forces, led by Khalifa Abdallahi ibn Muhammad, "The Mahdi", heir to the self-proclaimed Mahdi Muhammad Ahmad who had embarked on a campaign to conquer Egypt, to drive out the Ottomans.

In tracing the rise of the modern idea of the American "new woman", Lynn Dumenil examines World War I's surprising impact on women and, in turn, women's impact on the war. Telling the stories of a diverse group of women, including African Americans, dissidents, pacifists, reformers, and industrial workers, Dumenil analyzes both the roadblocks and opportunities they faced. She richly explores the ways in which women helped the United States mobilize for the largest military endeavor in the nation's history.

History often turns not on grand plans, but on small, fragile moments. On June 28, 1914, a string of chance decisions, missed warnings, wrong turns, and near escapes brought an unknown nineteen-year-old face to face with the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire on a narrow street in Sarajevo. That encounter would ignite a chain reaction that plunged Europe into World War I and reshaped the twentieth century. The Last Turn on Franz Josef Street examines the life and motives of Gavrilo Princip, the reluctant assassin whose actions triggered a global conflict that transformed politics, borders,...

A joint operation between Britain and France, the 1916 Battle of the Somme was an attempt to gain territory and dent Germany's military strength. By the end of the action, the Allied Forces had made just twelve kilometres. For this slight gain, more than a million lives were lost. In this classic military memoir, Staff Sergeant Sidney Rogerson vividly captures the last spell of frontline duty performed by the 2nd Battalion of the West Yorkshire Regiment.

Lev Davidovich Trotsky burst onto the world stage in November 1917 as coleader of a Marxist Revolution seizing power in Russia. It made him one of the most recognized personalities of the 20th century, a global icon of radical change. Yet just months earlier, this same Lev Trotsky was a nobody, a refugee expelled from Europe, writing obscure pamphlets and speeches, barely noticed outside a small circle of fellow travelers. Where had he come from to topple Russia and change the world? Where else? New York.

An audio dramatisation of July 1914 Countdown to War by Sean McMeekin.

This true contemporary account of an American nurse’s horrific – and sometimes bizarre – experiences while serving at a French battlefield hospital near Soissons during World War I has poignant layers which even the often naïve author did not see. “As our camion drove through the château gate we could see that the grounds were covered with what looked like sleeping men.” That is just her own introduction to the unit, housed in what was once a country estate; soon she was standing hours on end treating friend and enemy alike, facing harrowing hyperreality with aplomb. Shirley ...

In A Genius for Deception, Nicholas Rankin offers a lively and comprehensive history of how Britain bluffed, tricked, and spied its way to victory in two world wars. As Rankin shows, a coherent program of strategic deception emerged in World War I, resting on the pillars of camouflage, propaganda, secret intelligence, and special forces. All forms of deception found an avid sponsor in Winston Churchill, who carried his enthusiasm for deceiving the enemy into World War II.

Step into the heart of history with the War Omnibus: Volume I from History Nerds, a sweeping exploration of five monumental wars that reshaped the world. From Napoleon’s rise and fall in the Napoleonic Wars, to the epic clashes of the Crimean War and American Civil War, this collection traces the struggles that defined nations.

The Harlem Hellfighters, also known as the 369th Infantry Regiment of the U. S. Army, embody a significant intersection of America’s military history and racial history. Initially raised as the 15th New York (Colored) National Guard and later federalized for World War I, the regiment was "loaned" to the French Army, where it compiled an extraordinary combat record, with a remarkable 191 days on the line and suffering about 1,400 casualties while never yielding its sector (Morrow & Sammons, 2014, pp. 3–6; Harris, 2003, pp. 233–235).

'It is rare to find a tale so strange, intimate and human yet at the same time so enormous, so global in its importance. Yet again John Nichol impresses us with his ability to weave together the little details and the grand narrative' Dan Snow *** Over one million British Empire soldiers were...