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Amazon.com Review
Despite the avalanche of books written about the First World War in recent years, there have been comparatively few books that deliver a comprehensive account of the war and its campaigns from start to finish. The First World War fills the gap superbly. As readers familiar with Keegan's previous books (including The Second World War and Six Armies in Normandy) know, he's a historian of the old school. He has no earth-shattering new theories to challenge the status quo, no first-person accounts to tug on the emotions--what he does have, though, is a gift for talking the lay person through the twists and turns of a complex narrative in a way that is never less than accessible or engaging.

Keegan never tries to ram his learning down your throat. Where other authors have struggled to explain how Britain could ever allow itself to be dragged into such a war in 1914, Keegan keeps his account practical. The level of communications that we enjoy today just didn't exist then, and so it was much harder to keep track of what was going on. By the time a message had finally reached the person in question, the situation may have changed out of all recognition. Keegan applies this same "cock-up" theory of history to the rest of the war, principally the three great disasters at Gallipoli, the Somme, and Passchendaele. The generals didn't send all those troops to their deaths deliberately, Keegan argues; they did it out of incompetence and ineptitude, and because they had no idea of what was actually going on at the front.

While The First World War is not afraid to point the finger at those generals who deserve it, even Keegan has to admit he doesn't have all the answers. If it all seems so obviously futile and such a massive waste of life now, he asks, how could it have seemed worthwhile back then? Why did so many people carry on, knowing they would die? Why, indeed. --John Crace, Amazon.co.uk

From Publishers Weekly
In a riveting narrative that puts diaries, letters and action reports to good use, British military historian Keegan (The Face of Battle, etc.) delivers a stunningly vivid history of the Great War. He is equally at easeAand equally generous and sympatheticAprobing the hearts and minds of lowly soldiers in the trenches or examining the thoughts and motivations of leaders (such as Joffre, Haig and Hindenburg) who directed the maelstrom. In the end, Keegan leaves us with a brilliant, panoramic portrait of an epic struggle that was at once noble and futile, world-shaking and pathetic. The war was unnecessary, Keegan writes, because the train of events that led to it could have been derailed at any time, "had prudence or common goodwill found a voice." And it was tragic, consigning 10 million to their graves, destroying "the benevolent and optimistic culture" of Europe and sowing the seeds of WWII. While Niall Ferguson's The Pity of War (Forecasts, Mar. 8) offers a revisionist, economic interpretation of the causes of WWI, Keegan stands impressively mute before the unanswerable question he poses: "Why did a prosperous continent, at the height of its success as a source and agent of global wealth and power and at one of the peaks of its intellectual and cultural achievement, choose to risk all it had won for itself and all it offered to the world in the lottery of a vicious and local internecine conflict?" Photos not seen by PW. 75,000-copy first printing; simultaneous Random House audio. (June)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
Grade 9 Up-John Keegan's account of the Great War for our generation.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Another Great Single-Volume History from Keegan
This book might even be superior to his Second World War. Like his earlier work, this volume is not full of the extensive scholastic insight that can be gleaned elsewhere. But for an introductory, single-volume treatment of the war, few better exist. Highly readable and incorporating Keegan's mastery of the subject matter, it would be my first suggestion for someone interested in beginning a study of the military history of the First World War.

War of the World, 1914
This is a fine one volume history of the Great War. Yet in spite of the dense factual material, I found myself confused by the repetitive numeration of military units, without enough maps to help. The book is stronger on diplomatic activities that led up to the fighting, but does not provide the rich full description of the personalities leading the fight, which is done better in Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman.
Descriptions of the titanic battles on the Eastern Front are helpful, and the explanation of the collapse of Tsarist Russia is an eye-opener for those who prefer to focus on the Western Front. TEN MILLION died for nothing, only to see greater tragedy 20 years later. How foolish were the elite diplomats, generals, and royalty; so much of classical European civilization destroyed. Here are the roots of problems in Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

Lest We Forget
The First World War is a good general history of an entirely avoidable war that wrought death on a previously unimaginable scale. By the end the reader is struck by the shear numbers; e.g., over 600,000 killed in the first four months of 1914. Over 1.2 million casualties of the Somme; another 700,000 at Verdun. Some 630,000 French widows in 1918. All, in the most part, given for a few miles of ground traded over four years.

The first chapter is a poignant description of the impact of the war. A reader visiting Europe is alerted to the memorials, the lists of the dead in its churches, large and small. One is directed to the cemeteries that, like strands of pearls, dot the landscape of Flanders. Early chapters describe the world that was the early 20th Century - economically, socially, politically. Though inferior to Tuchman's The Guns of August (most are), Keegan clearly sets the table for the events of 1914. Subsequent chapters - roughly organized by year of the war - describe the major military actions, with thorough consideration of Europe and fair coverage of Africa, the Middle East and the Pacific. Air and sea operations receive some albeit abbreviated attention. Major military players - von Schlieffen, Moltke, Joffre, Haig, Petain, Luddendorf, etc. - are adequately covered; political leaders less so. The roles of Rickenbacker, Rommel, Richthoffen, Lawrence, etc. are interesting mentions. Keegan does a fine job of describing trench design and logistics, use of artillery, and WWI communications (or lack thereof). However, while mentioned in broader context, this is not a treatise on combat technology; e.g., submarine, airplane, machine gun, tank, poison gas. Keegan's treatments of the ANZACs at Gallipoli and the BEF at the Somme are particularly poignant, sensitive to those catastrophes' enduring influence on the British psyche. Keegan also goes into considerable length to describe the melting pot that was Austria-Hungary (and the Balkans in general) and the state of Russia in 1917, including the revolutions that took it out of the war.

Complaints are few. The book is well documented. Keegan's British prose may seem labored to some American readers, in places requiring a sentence (some over 30 words) or paragraph be re-read for clarity. The story suffers from relative abrupt treatment of the armistice and nothing substantial on the Treaty of Versailles. However, the preface makes clear that the seeds of WWII were planted in 1918. Keegan's maps do not always complement his descriptions of geography and terrain (e.g., references to cities, rivers or topography are often absent from the applicable map, which too often is separated from the commentary requiring "flipping".)

The last of the WWI veterans are leaving us. Keegan's is a worthwhile read, lest we forget.