The Great War: World War I, 1914 -1918
Slaughter, carnage, charnel house, meat-grinder – no other war evokes terms like these quite so readily as World War I. Seen now as the disastrous combination of 19th century military tactics with a new and expanding mechanized technology of warfare, the Great War left an impoverished world, produced a dramatically different global power structure, and, in what has been called the “peace to end all peace,” planted the seeds for World War II and conflicts that continue to this day. It has also been called the Literary War because of the remarkable outpouring of literature that it produced and continues to produce nearly one hundred years later.
Classic Fiction
Three Soldiers
John Dos Passos, 1949
F / Dos Passos
The Good Soldier Svejk and His Fortunes in the World War
Jaroslav Hašek, 1951 (translation 1973)
F / Hasek
A Farewell to Arms
Ernest Hemingway, 1929
F / Hemingway
Ashenden: or, The British Agent
W. Somerset Maugham, 1941
S / Maugham
All Quiet on the Western Front
Erich Maria Remarque, 1930
F / Remarque
And Quiet Flows the Don
Mikhail Sholokhov, 1934
F / Sholokhov
Modern Fiction
Regeneration
Pat Barker, 1991
F / Barker
The Air We Breathe: A Novel
Andrea Barrett, 2007
F / Barrett
Birdsong
Sebastian Faulks, 1993
F / Faulks
The Man from St. Petersburg
Ken Follett, 1982
S / Follett
Deafening
Frances Itani, 2003
F / Itani
A Very Long Engagement
Sébastien Japrisot, 1993
F / Japrisot
Gifts of War: A Novel
MacKenzie Ford, 2008
F / Ford
We Shall Not Sleep: A Novel
Anne Perry, 2007
F / Perry
To the Last Man: A Novel of the First World War
Jeff Shaara, 2004
F / Shaara
August 1914
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, 1972
F / Solzhenitsyn
Johnny Got His Gun
Dalton Trumbo, 1982
F / Trumbo
History
The First World War: A Complete History
Martin Gilbert, 1994
940.3 / GIL
A More Unbending Battle: The Harlem Hellfighters’ Struggle For Freedom in WWI and Equality at Home
Peter N. Nelson, 2009
940.41273 / NEL
Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce
Stanley Weintraub, 2001
940.4144 / WEI
The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919
Mark Thompson, 2009
940.4145 / THO
World War I: The African Front
Edward Paice, 2008
940.416 / PAI
The Guns of August
Barbara W. Tuchman, 1994
940.42 / TUC
To Conquer Hell: The Meuse-Argonne, 1918
Edward G. Lengel, 2008
940.436 / LEN
Unknown Soldiers: The Story of the Missing of the First World War
Neil Hanson, 2005
940.48 / HAN
The Battlefields of the First World War: The Unseen Panoramas of the Western Front
Peter Barton, 2005
Q / 940.4144 / BAR
Biography & Memoir
The Enormous Room
E. E. Cummings, 1934
F / Cummings
Memoirs of George Sherston
Siegfried Sassoon, 1937
F / Sassoon
Casualty Figures: How Five Men Survived the First World War
Michéle Barrett, 2007
616.85212 / BAR
King, Kaiser, Tsar: Three Royal Cousins Who Led the World to War
Catrine Clay, 2006
940.3 / CLA
Regina’s Closet: Finding My Grandmother’s Secret Journal
Diana M. Raab, 2007
940.3161 / RAA
The Remains of Company D: A Story of the Great War
James Carl Nelson, 2009
940.41273 / NEL
Ace of the Iron Cross
Ernst Udet, 1981
940.44943 / UDE
Testament of Youth
Vera Brittain, 1933
B / BRITTAIN, Vera
Good-bye to All That
Robert Graves, 1929
B / GRAVES, Robert
Richthofen: A True History of the Red Baron
William E. Burrows, 1969
B / RICHTHOFEN, Manfred
Literature & Poetry
Armistice Day: An Anthology of the Best Prose and Verse on Patriotism, the Great War, the Armistice--Its History, Observance, Spirit and Significance; Victory, the Unknown Soldier and His Brothers, and Peace
A.P. Sanford and Robert Haven, compilers, 1927
808.8 / Sa5
Voices from the Great War
Peter Vansittart, compiler, 1981
820.8 / VOI
The Great War and Modern Memory
Paul Fussell, 1975
820.93 / FUS
In Flanders Fields and Other Poems
John McCrae, [2005]
821.91 / MCC
Great Poets of World War I: Poetry from the Great War
Jon Stallworthy, 2002
821.912 / STA
The World War I Reader
Michael S. Neiberg, editor, 2007
940.3 / WOR
