Very good. It's exhaustively researched and engagingly written, and does a decent job of discussing both the origins and impact of the war. It's a military history, so there's a lot of focus on the movements of armies and their ordnance and materiel, which can get a little dry (order of battle has never been my strong suit), but I learned a lot, especially when it came to US involvement. (We had troops in central Asia, helping Czech prisoners who took over the Trans-Siberian railway and shafted the Bolsheviks. I had NO clue.) Anyone who likes a history with a strong focus on military strategy and tactics will enjoy this.

Was hoping for more of a general history of the war that drew in the social and political elements, but instead got a military focus that felt like history with horse-blinders. Keegan introduces elements like the war weariness and internal politics of the parties only at the moments it becomes militarily relevant, meaning you never get a sense of momentum or continuity in the larger conflict. Instead, you get a lot of place names and corps numbers and petty opportunities found and squandered.

It was interesting, though, to see Keegan's totally different approach to Tuchman in covering the war's opening stages: while Tuchman tells of plans and schemes undone by individual foibles and contingency, Keegan stresses how much the plans were never going to work and were theoretically unsound or blind to certain elements. Neither approaches really felt thematically of-a-piece with a larger theme to the book, or a better take on the war as a whole.

The prose is good enough to get you thorough the first hundred pages or so but after that becomes a slog. Going to take a break from WWI and then return to try another book, probably The Beauty and the Sorrow.

Really good. First sparked interest in the Great War by visiting the World War I museum in Kansas City. Does a really great job at tracking the impetus behind the conflict and the inner workings of the military brains in the Central Powers and Allies and detailing battles, lines and movements.

Barely hints at the air force battles and the use of gas. Does not go into life in the trenches or generally how the actual battles, space affected the civilians of France, Belgium, Africa or Turkey. This is for a military historian more than a person seeking a personal look at the war. Still very good though.

The Somme? Verdun? Flanders? I realized I had very little knowledge of the first terrible war that shaped the 20th century. Last year I read Barbara Tuchman's "Guns of August." I loved it but since it only concentrated on the summer of 1914, it made me yearn for a more comprehensive history of the Great War. "The First World War" by John Keegan is exactly what I wanted.

Keegan certainly assumes the reader has some sort of background and knowledge of the First World War, but I don't think it's necessary to have extensive knowledge before picking it up. While he doesn't go into as much detail as Tuchman (or else the book would be 2000+ pages!), he tells the story and battles of WWI in a very matter of fact manner but in a way that's interesting and not dry and boring like a lot of history novels. Keegan, despite being an Englishman, tells history in a non-biased manner. However, there's also a lot of trauma and sorrow surrounding the war (and rightly so) and he does his crown and country justice through beautiful prose of the more unfortunate and terrible battles of the empire, like Gallipoli and the Somme.

One part was hard to get through for me and it dealt with the Russian Revolution and counter-revolution and Germany's involvement after Russia pulled out of the war in 1918. I didn't get how it fit into the novel's relevance. Perhaps the biggest genius of John Keegan is this novel isn't a stand alone novel, he does a great job at tying it into greater European and international politics and economics. An argument I had never heard and that took Keegan a novel to complete, was that Bolshevik victory in Russia was because of Germany's support for it after the peace treaty at Brest-Litovsk, which charted the course for the rest of the events in the 20th century.

Great book, well written. Will definitely check out his novel on WWII and this will not be the last time I pick up this novel to read.

In you're wanting to dip your toe into the waters of WWI, this is the way to do it. Whole libraries could be filled with books on The Great War, yet Keegan does a magnificent job of keeping such a massive topic contained within a single volume. Learning about the "war to end all wars" is absolutely essential to understanding our word today. With little effort the connections from WWI to WWII through the Cold War to post-Soviet collapse to now all come together like a massive tapestry (for me anyway). Let's never forgot this war, why it was fought, and those who died for it.

This wasn't the most excitingly written history book I've ever read, but it does thoroughly examine, as well as can be expected, the 51 month conflict.

Love Keegan's writing and this did not disappoint.