100 books like The World and All That It Holds

The best account of the futile Allied attempts to keep Russia in the war.   Largely ignored, mainly because it was politically embarrassing and.  Still worse, through no fauly of the army, it was militarily unsucessful.  But the intervention left lasting scars, and consequences were fatal for the remainder of the century. 

The First World War broke out in August 1914; by September 1914 articles and essays began to appear that defended – or attacked – the policies of the men responsible for the July Crisis. Books soon followed. And they have never stopped. No crisis in history has received more attention than that of July 1914. The topic, with its vast complexities, missed opportunities, and contradictory explanations, continues to fascinate us.

No book on the subject is more captivating than Thomas Otte’s day-by-day unravelling of the complicated diplomacy pursued by the statesmen of Europe. His mastery of the subject is impressive (he has written dozens of articles and essays on the diplomacy of prewar Europe) and his balanced treatment of the topic serves as a model of dispassionate scholarship.

This is a history of classical music from 1900 onwards. I’ve always been interested in early twentieth-century western art. It seems to have veered off in radically new directions and expressed a different consciousness than what preceded it. Perhaps it was fomented by the dissolution of the relatively stable European order of the nineteenth century, shattered by the First World War. 

Alex Ross discusses the music of these times and the lives of the people who composed it. He is eminently capable, being musically trained, and finds the perfect balance between the technical and the personal. I was fascinated to learn that Shostakovich was a man who lived in constant fear of being purged. He always expected to be imprisoned. 

I also learned about Harry Partch, the American composer, who devised his own tuning systems and built an orchestra of strange instruments to play his music.

The Rest is Noise… show more.

Most of us believe that the Big Oil has politicians in its pocket, and that oil drives America’s actions in the Middle East.

Yergin’s terrific history shows that there’s so much more: oil has fueled the growth of empires, it has decided the world wars, it has made and broken some of the world’s biggest fortunes. (You might also like the TV documentary made from the book, narrated by Donald Sutherland.)

Set in London in the early 1920s, Huxley’s Antic Hay follows a cast of young bohemian and artistic characters, all affected in various ways by the Great War, as they search for SOMETHING to give meaning to their lives. London has changed, the world has changed, and they are lost. Cripplingly shy Theodore Gumbril, the main character, (inventor of Gumbril's Patent Small-Clothes, trousers which contain an inflatable cushion in the seat) searches for love, and meaning, in the shattered society following the end of the war. His search for love – including the donning of a false, confidence-boosting beard, makes for an absurd kind of comedy. Antic Hay is a savage satire, a switchback of emotions, swooping between humour and despair – though the slight plot does sometimes get rather side-lined by intellectual discussions and I admit to skipping the odd page. However, it gives an excellent flavour of the… show more.

A leading archivist at the Modern Military Records Branch at the National Archives, Yockelson, another good friend, tackled a subject rarely covered, United States troops attached to the British where they fought with very little recognition back home for their valor on the battlefields of Flanders and the Somme. Two National Guard divisions, the 27th from New York State and the 30th from North and South Carolina and Tennessee, formed the American II Corps.

They took part in some of the bloodiest battles of the war. The 27th Division’s 107th Regiment from New York’s wealthy Upper East Side broke through the vaunted Hindenburg Line and in doing so lost more men on a single day of fighting than any regiment in United States history. I write about that regiment in my book, Duty, Honor, Privilege. Yockelson’s book covers it all for those Yankee troops fighting alongside the Brits.

This modern gothic follows Ivy Radcliffe as she suddenly inherits an estate house in England, during the tail end of World War I.

Throughout this story grief is explored very intimately through Ivy mourning the loss of her brother to the war, but also the way that the communal grief of the war affects individuals and shapes English society and how it functions.

Without giving away too many spoilers, memory places a huge, multilayered role in the story, and of course we see the way that grief and memory are connected, both through the way Ivy remembers her lost brother and characters mourning the way life once was before the war and, ultimately, will never be again.

This is the first novel I read about grieving families who commissioned photographers to search for the place where their loved one died, in order that a photo could be taken for them to have as a keepsake.

I love learning something new when I read a book and I discovered so much about the after-effects of losing someone without having knowledge of their last moments and a place to pay one’s respects. 

This is about Edie, a widow wanting answers about her husband who she believes might still be alive, despite being classed as ‘missing, presumed dead’ in 1917. She commissions her late husband’s brother to search for him and photograph his final resting place, if indeed there is one.

A wonderful, haunting story of enduring love and loss.

Charles Bean’s epic volumes were pioneering, illuminating, thorough, deeply researched and far superior to equivalent official histories produced by other nations involved in the conflict.

Although Bean’s books were written long ago — between 1921 and 1942 — they are still the starting point for any credible project concerning itself with what the AIF did in battle. And he edited various volumes in the Official History series compiled by other writers as well, including a book about the home front during the war.

Bean was remarkable. His Official History, and the records and research materials underpinning it, have been crucial in so much of my work—not only my lost generation multi-biographies, and also my books on Pompey Elliott and Will Dyson, but many other research projects as well.

If there is one story to fire the imagination about naval action in the First World War, it is that of the German cruiser Emden and her crew. Her commander, Karl von Müller, showed skill and chivalrous humanity in equal measure.

Emden raided the Indian Ocean, pursued by numerous Allied warships, causing havoc to commerce. The cruise ended in an epic final action with the Australian cruiser Sydney. Part of the crew then made an audacious escape home across the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Desert.

Lochner’s research is thorough, making extensive use of archive material to tell the story. This is essential for writing well-informed history, but he also brings the crew and their adventures vividly to life.