The First World War : A Complete History by Martin Gilbert for

Martin Gilbert was a British historian and honorary Fellow of Merton College, University of Oxford. He was the author of eighty-eight books, including works on Winston Churchill, the 20th century, and Jewish history. He was a member of the Chilcot Inquiry into the UK’s role in the Iraq War. This book is about the First World War, “the war to end all wars”. It began at 11.15 on 28 June,1914 in Sarajevo. It ended – officially – almost five years later. Unofficially, it has never ended: the horrors we live with today were born in the First World War. It left millions maimed or dead. And it left us with new technologies of death: tanks, planes, submarines, rapid-fire machine guns and poison gas. It introduced us to strategic bombing, to unrestricted war on civilians and mistreatment of prisoners. Most of all, it changed our world. In its wake empires toppled, monarchies fell and political systems and geographic boundaries realigned. Instabilities were institutionalised, enmities enshrined. Codes of behaviour, class distinctions – all underwent a vast sea-change. The Twentieth Century can truly be said to have been born on the morning of 28 June, 1914.