What draws me to history books is to get a feel for what it was like to live in the moments described. What would it have been like to cross the Rubicon with Caesar or to march into Russia with Napoleon? The trenches of WWI are possibly one of the worst places in history to find yourself. While Keegan does a good job of telling the story of the Great War, he seemed to focus more on names and dates then on getting down in the dirt. So the book offers a great history, from beginning to end, of the war, but I didn't feel like I was there.

Most of the time when Keegan describes a battle, he takes pains to say which armies were there. So we hear that it was the French such and such divisions with help from this and that brigade opposed by German armies 18, 20 and 21. It got to be kind of like reading statistics - you get that this is big, for the numbers of armies and bombs and such are large. But after a while the affect wears off and it starts to mean little.

The best parts of the book then are when he does offer quotes from soldiers in the trenches, or insights into the characters of the people fighting the war. But those tend to be lost in the details of everything else. Maybe in a book this size, covering what it covered, doing more was impossible. Which is why it is a great volume to get into the ins and outs of the Great War. But if you want to feel it, you have got to listen to Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast on the War!

Good...I'm not too fond of Keegan's straight up histories. I much prefer his books like face of battle, the mask of command, and intelligence in war that are mostly analysis. Worth reading but martin gilberts book by the same name was better and shorter.

If you like your history neat and factual, this is it.

I enjoyed this very well written, if not overwritten, single volume history of the Great War. Very slow going, but worth it.

It's a good introduction to the politics and the history of the Great War. It doesnt go into much detail about every battle but it gives a good start to anyone who might be interested in the topic.

This is a great overview of WWI and the politics and logistics that made it a uniquely savage and brutal war. The book covers many of the topics that I consider essential to understand WWI like the advent of tanks and the ubiquitous trenches. I would have liked to see more depth given to the role of the Ottoman Empire, and even Japan! (The author provides a great deal of detail on the fall of Tsarist Russia and the rise of the USSR. I would have liked to see similar detail for the Ottomans.)

The author has a chapter titled “America and Armageddon,” but doesn’t discuss America’s role more than some paragraphs describing the over-arching role she played. On the same topic, I would have liked to see greater detail about all parties, not just the summaries given to battles and participants. I understand that not every historian is Max Hastings and that not every war is WWII, but it would have been nice to get a really gritty history of the war.

I loved the narrator and I loved the material we did get. I just wish the author had given us more.

Author John Keegan gives the impression late in this very good book that he held the Kaiser partially responsible for the Great War as he embarked on a pointless attempt to match Britain’s maritime strength that “….in all possibility, might have been the (cause of the) neurotic climate of suspicion and insecurity from which the First World War was born.” Based on this book being very much written from a British point of view it is easy to understand why Keegan is of this opinion. In the end though I have still no idea and will read further into this subject in the coming years.

As to the book it strangely gave depictions of battles in that the author’s coverage was written with a sense of tedium. Thousands died in pointless campaigns that all seemed the same from east to west to north to south. Events such as the African theatre and Gallipoli were so rare as to be almost startlingly different. Keegan says as much, one point calling “The chronicles of its battles..” the “… dreariest literature in military history”

If I can think of one thing that this book lacked was coverage of US involvement. Late as it was the fresh troops made a considerable difference to the final outcome I would suggest. But with that there is not much new I can add to an already saturated subject other than say that this is a very good one volume history and is to be recommended to anyone looking for an Anglocentric point of view.

A truly excellent overview if the Great War. It strikes the perfect balance between the sweeping currents and themes and the details of the innumerable aspects of this first of all modern wars. It also doesn't shy away from the outright horrors and doesn't always try to rationalise the losses. An excellent book for a lay person to begin to understand this pivotal historical event.