A very brisk, but interesting overview of the First World War. Attention is balanced between politics, strategy and tactics, giving a broad picture of all fronts of the war. Concentrates on the major parts of the war, and does justice to all sides. (British and American romances of Lawrence and Hemingway get no more than a name-drop) ( )

It has been 100 years since this global disaster. Norman Stones' book is a fast moving recap of the event that cost millions of lives and resolved so little. The war to end all wars didn't, only becoming just another step in the technology of killing on a massive scale. A good enough review on the debacle that accomplished next to nothing, and spawned Adolf Hitler. ( )

A great book about a terrible disaster. It should be read both as an almost perfect summary of its subject, as well as a shining exemplar of its genre.

It was something of a war without heroes, and the performance of the principal actors--the general, the statesman, and even the prancing cavalry-man-- wreaked enormous and even catastrophic destruction, all-too-often due to an unprofessional lack of skill among the leaders. However, at least all this ineptitude is described expertly, and in a short space the author has included a suprising amount of carefully-chosen, revealing, and even insightful detail (e.g. "'Third Ypres' was to do more to disaffect the British educated classes than anything that Lenin ever wrote.")

It is a remarkable example of great quality in small quantity, not unlike an athlete who seeks to marry great strength with a frame that remains slim and flexible...or even the proverbial pearl of great price, of great worth, and yet not at all difficult to hold in your hands.

(10/10) ( )

Stone provides a concise and easily readable account of WWI in about 200 pages. Although the book is short, as the name implies it is chocked full of the major information about the build up to war, the war itself, and the aftermath. Each chapter in the book is broken up into one year of the war and goes over the major action for that year. If your looking for detail of specific battles you will not find them here as only the basic outline of the action is presented. In addition Stone does not go into much detail about the technological advances other then to state that they happened. Moreover the book also mainly focuses on the European fronts and leaves out the sideline actions such as the ones in Africa and Arabia. One thing that was a nice addition to the book was the inclusion of an additional source that has some of the more resent works on WWI listed. The one theme that seems to permeate Stones work is the ineptitude of the leaders on all sides. Time and time again it is shown that the men in charge failed or refused to learn from their mistakes and continued to send men into the meat grinder. Once the leaders started to amend their tactics it was to late in the war to have much affect other then to waist more lives. Overall even with it exclusions I liked Stones account of WWI it was easy to read and had some insight into the start of the war that i had not seen before. I would say its a good place to start for someone who wants to learn more about WWI but found the much larger books daunting or as a refresher on the topic. ( )

I did not finish this audio book for it was dry and to hard to follow. It seemed more like reference material. ( )