100 books like The World and All That It Holds

By Aleksandar Hemon,

Here are 100 books that The World and All That It Holds fans have personally recommended if you like The World and All That It Holds. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919

John Mosier Author Of The Myth of the Great War: A New Military History of World War I

From my list on the other fronts in WW1.

Why am I passionate about this?

Currently a full professor at Loyola University, he entered college at 16, studying chemistry, economics, and literature. He did graduate work in German, Russian, and Philosophy, held a double fellowship in music and literature, and wrote his dissertation on the relationship between historiography and epic poetry. In 2001, his 10th book, The Myth of the Great War was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in history.

John's book list on the other fronts in WW1

John Mosier Why did John love this book?

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. 

By Joel R. Moore, Harry H. Mead, Lewis E. Jahns

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In the aftermath of the First World War, the United States sent 13,000 troops into the Soviet Union in support of the Tsarist White Russian Army, in an attempt to crush the Bolshevik government that had assumed power in the Russian Revolution. Written by three American doughboys who fought in Russia, this is a firsthand account of the only time in history that American troops directly fought Red Army troops.


Book cover of July Crisis: The World's Descent into War, Summer 1914

Gordon Martel Author Of The Origins of the First World War

From my list on why the First World War happened.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a historian of diplomacy, war, and empire. A founding editor of The International History Review, I have written books on ‘Imperial Diplomacy’, on the origins of the First World War, and on the July Crisis. I have edited: the 5-volume Encyclopedia of War and the 4-volume Encyclopedia of Diplomacy; the journals of A.L. Kennedy for the Royal Historical Society; numerous collections of essays, and the multi-volume Seminar Studies in History series. I am currently working on a two-volume study of Political Intelligence in Great Britain, 1900-1950, which is a group biography of the men who made up the Department of Political Intelligence in Britain, 1917-1919

Gordon's book list on why the First World War happened

Gordon Martel Why did Gordon love this book?

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.

By T. G. Otte,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked July Crisis as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This is a magisterial new account of Europe's tragic descent into a largely inadvertent war in the summer of 1914. Thomas Otte reveals why a century-old system of Great Power politics collapsed so disastrously in the weeks from the 'shot heard around the world' on June 28th to Germany's declaration of war on Russia on August 1st. He shows definitively that the key to understanding how and why Europe descended into world war is to be found in the near-collective failure of statecraft by the rulers of Europe and not in abstract concepts such as the 'balance of power' or…


Book cover of The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century

Tom Newton Author Of Seven Cries of Delight

From my list on making you question the nature of reality.

Why am I passionate about this?

By the age of nine, I was beginning to wonder why things were the way they were, or if indeed they were at all. Perhaps growing up the youngest of five siblings and listening to conflicting opinions set me on my course. One of my sisters introduced me to literature. I began to write plays based on Shakespeare and Monty Python. The love of absurdity took me early on. I liked books that offered a different view of reality. I still do, and it influences what I write today. I believe Borges said something to the effect that all authors keep writing the same book, just in different ways.

Tom's book list on making you question the nature of reality

Tom Newton Why did Tom love this book?

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…

By Alex Ross,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Rest Is Noise as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Alex Ross's sweeping history of twentieth-century classical music, winner of the Guardian First Book Award, is a gripping account of a musical revolution.

The landscape of twentieth-century classical music is a wild one: this was a period in which music fragmented into apparently divergent strands, each influenced by its own composers, performers and musical innovations. In this comprehensive tour, Alex Ross, music critic for the 'New Yorker', explores the people and places that shaped musical development: Adams to Zweig, Brahms to Bjoerk, pre-First World War Vienna to 'Nixon in China'.

Above all, this unique portrait of an exceptional era weaves…


Book cover of The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power

Leif Wenar Author Of Blood Oil: Tyrants, Violence, and the Rules that Run the World

From my list on why oil is a curse.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a Stanford professor who became fascinated with oil and everything it does to for us and to us. For years I traveled the world talking to the people who know petroleum: executives in the big oil companies, politicians and activists, militants and victims, spies and tribal chiefs. Blood Oil explains what I learned and how we can make our oil-cursed world better for all of us. 

Leif's book list on why oil is a curse

Leif Wenar Why did Leif love this book?

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.)

By Daniel Yergin,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Prize as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Written by the author of "Shattered Peace" and "Energy Future", this book brings to life the tycoons, wildcatters, monopolists, regulators, presidents, generals and sheiks whose struggle for oil has shaken the world economy, dictated the outcome of wars, transformed the destiny of Britain and the world and profoundly changed all our lives. Beginning with the first oil well of the 1850s and continuing up to Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, it is a story of greed, gumption nad ingenuity, all in pursuit of "the prize" - worldwide economic, military and political mastery through the control of oil. The book includes…


Book cover of Antic Hay

Lesley Glaister Author Of Blasted Things

From my list on finding a new normal after World War I.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am the prize-winning author of sixteen novels, most recently Little Egypt, The Squeeze, and Blasted Things. I teach creative writing at the University of St Andrews. I live in Edinburgh and am a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. I’m a novelist and student of human nature. I love to work out what motivates people, how and why they make choices, their coping mechanisms, and how they act under pressure. Before I begin a novel set in the past, I read as much fiction written at the time as I can find, as well as autobiography and history. In this way, I attempt to truffle down into the actions and impulses of individuals, both performative and deeply interior, that characterise the spirit of the era that I’m writing.

Lesley's book list on finding a new normal after World War I

Lesley Glaister Why did Lesley love this book?

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…

By Aldous Huxley,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Antic Hay as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.


Book cover of Borrowed Soldiers, Volume 17: Americans Under British Command, 1918

Stephen L. Harris Author Of Duty, Honor, Privilege: New York City's Silk Stocking Regiment and the Breaking of the Hindenburg Line

From my list on World War I and America's role in it.

Why am I passionate about this?

Reading my great uncle’s war letters home to Kansas City and seeing his artwork—he was a magazine illustrator in civilian life and then editor of the 27th Empire Division’s magazine, Gas Attack—I knew, as a writer, I had to put his story down on paper. What his National Guard regiment did, the 107th, simply blew me away. From writing about what the 107th endured in the Great War, I was carried away to tackle the all-black 369th Regiment, famously known as Harlem’s Hell Fighters. I then had to tell the story of New York City’s most famous regiment, the Fighting 69th. My trilogy of New York’s National Guard in the war is now done.

Stephen's book list on World War I and America's role in it

Stephen L. Harris Why did Stephen love this book?

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.

By Mitchell A. Yockelson,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Borrowed Soldiers, Volume 17 as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The combined British Expeditionary Force and American II Corps successfully pierced the Hindenburg Line during the Hundred Days Campaign of World War I, an offensive that hastened the war's end. Yet despite the importance of this effort, the training and operation of II Corps has received scant attention from historians.

Mitchell A. Yockelson delivers a comprehensive study of the first time American and British soldiers fought together as a coalition force - more than twenty years before D-Day. He follows the two divisions that constituted II Corps, the 27th and 30th, from the training camps of South Carolina to the…


Book cover of The Last Heir to Blackwood Library

Marielle Thompson Author Of Where Ivy Dares to Grow

From my list on gothic that explore different types of grief.

Why am I passionate about this?

My debut novel, Where Ivy Dares to Grow, inherently explores many kinds of grief through the lens of a gothic novel; the grief of losing one’s sense of self to mental illness, of family estrangement, of relationships that have run their course, of illness in loved ones, of beloved places no longer being the beautiful things we remember them as. While this was not something I did consciously while writing, the gothic genre simply seemed to be a natural fit to investigate mourning in so many untraditional senses, using a sentient home and timeslips as metaphors for the way that grief can seem to shift the world and swallow one whole.

Marielle's book list on gothic that explore different types of grief

Marielle Thompson Why did Marielle love this book?

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.

By Hester Fox,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Last Heir to Blackwood Library as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"Weaves a spell of darkness that’s mysterious and magical, and binds it with a knot of deathless love." —New York Times bestselling author Susanna Kearsley on A Lullaby for Witches

In post–World War I England, a young woman inherits a mysterious library and must untangle its powerful secrets…

With the stroke of a pen, twenty-three-year-old Ivy Radcliffe becomes Lady Hayworth, owner of a sprawling estate on the Yorkshire moors. Ivy has never heard of Blackwood Abbey, or of the ancient bloodline from which she’s descended. With nothing to keep her in London since losing her brother in the Great War,…


Book cover of The Photographer of the Lost

Deborah Carr Author Of The Poppy Sisters

From my list on World War One that live rent free in my head.

Why am I passionate about this?

I discovered my passion for the First World War when researching my great-grandfather’s service history in the cavalry. I also write historical fiction with several of my books being set during the First World War and have spent thousands of hours over the past twenty years researching different aspects of this period, both from the point of view of the V.A.D.s, wounded soldiers, medical staff treating them, as well as grieving families. The stories I’ve come across never fail to haunt me and I can’t imagine I’ll ever tire of wanting to discover more about the people who survived these experiences, or stop needing to write books about them.

Deborah's book list on World War One that live rent free in my head

Deborah Carr Why did Deborah love this book?

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.

By Caroline Scott,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Photographer of the Lost as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

**Don't miss Caroline Scott's brand-new novel When I Come Home Again, a beautiful and compelling story based on true events - out now!!**

A BBC RADIO 2 BOOK CLUB PICK

'This excellent debut is a melancholic reminder of the rippling after-effects of war' The Times
'A touching novel of love and loss' Sunday Times

For fans of The Tattooist of Auschwitz and Where The Crawdads Sing comes a moving story, inspired by real events, about how hope and love will prevail against all odds.

1921
In the aftermath of war, everyone is searching for answers.

Edie's husband Francis never came…


Book cover of The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918

Ross McMullin Author Of Life So Full of Promise: further biographies of Australia's lost generation

From my list on WWI Australia in the battlefields and home front.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m an experienced historian, biographer, and storyteller. I’ve written widely about Australian politics, social history, sport, and World War I. My biography of Australia’s most famous fighting general, Pompey Elliott, won multiple national awards, and I assembled his extraordinary letters and diaries in a separate book, Pompey Elliott at War: In His Own Words. Another biography, Will Dyson: Australia’s Radical Genius, about a remarkably versatile artist–writer who was Australia’s first official war artist, was shortlisted for the National Biography Award. My multi-biography Farewell, Dear People: Biographies of Australia’s Lost Generation won the Prime Minister’s Prize for Australian History, and I’ve written a sequel, Life So Full of Promise.

Ross' book list on WWI Australia in the battlefields and home front

Ross McMullin Why did Ross love this book?

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.

Book cover of The Last Gentleman of War: The Raider Exploits of the Cruiser Emden

Mark Harris Author Of Harwich Submarines in the Great War: The First Submarine Campaign of the Royal Navy in 1914

From my list on WWI naval history without the same old story.

Why am I passionate about this?

Military history has always fascinated me. I grew up in Britain with my parents’ tales of service in the Second World War on land, sea, and in the air. The First World War saw the zenith of British sea power and was an obvious draw. The scale and scope of the fighting were huge, and I’ve been researching the naval war in depth for over thirty years. The high levels of literacy of the combatants mean that it is also possible to gain deep insights into their experiences. This makes for stories I'm passionate about discovering as a reader and telling as an author. I hope this list helps you discover them too.

Mark's book list on WWI naval history without the same old story

Mark Harris Why did Mark love this book?

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.

By R.K. Lochner, Thea Lindauer (translator), Harry Lindauer (translator)

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Last Gentleman of War as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Based on German, French, and English sources, this World War I saga of the German cruiser Emden provides a colorful portrait of a lost era of naval warfare and a lasting tribute to a legendary merchant raider. Though dauntless in pursuit of enemy ships, the Emden treated captured crews with great courtesy and is remembered today as the last man-of-war that adhered to a chivalric code of conduct. The bold and gallant raids against Allied merchant ships in the Indian Ocean earned the Emden the admiration of friend and foe alike. In a single raid it sank a Russian cruiser…


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Interested in World War 1, the Bolsheviks, and Vienna?

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