The most recommended books about trench warfare

Amid the industrial war of fire and fury, a key question remains on how the soldiers survived. Watson’s book explores the experience for British and German soldiers, drawing upon their letters and diaries. Enduring the Great War offers new ways to understand the war of the trenches, how morale was sustained, and it provides an inner portrait into the men who took in the grinding warfare.

Not as well known as Henri Barbusse’s great novel Under Fire (Le feu), Chevalier’s book should be on everyone’s shelf of works on the Great War. This aptly titled novel is very obviously based on Chevalier’s own experiences serving as a soldier at the front. The writing is haunting and evocative of the extreme trauma of combat, the miseries of life in the trenches, and the emotional responses of young soldiers to the broader society that sent them to war. 

This may be the book that started it all. Mosse has many books that try to explain the rise of the Nazis in Germany who Mosse and his parents fled in the 1930s. Here Mosse describes how Nazis used the war dead from the First World War in an explicit attempt to harness the nationalism of Germans to support Nazi politics. Winter disagrees with Mosse and developed arguments that are probably more accepted by historians today but, for me, that doesn’t take away from the power of Mosse’s argument. Even though I don’t always agree with Mosse’s analysis, I can’t help but be engrossed by his writing, his passion, and his ability to describe how the war dead could be used as political weapons. 

Alice Winn writes with great tenderness and depth of understanding about two young men who fall in love against the backdrop of the Great War.

As a lesbian who struggled in my youthful years with coming out and finding my place in the world, I resonated with the shame, trepidation, and ambivalence these men experienced.

I love to support authors who grapple with the difficult questions around acceptance of gays and lesbians, and I applaud Alice Winn for the heartfelt story she tells in this novel. 

It’s not common for books about WWI to contain detailed analysis of both the battlefields and the home front (although this dual coverage is a feature of my lost generation multi-biographies).

To compile a comprehensive history of Australia during the war that combines what happened at home with what occurred at the various fronts is indeed a daunting task, yet Joan Beaumont accomplished it with conspicuous success in this acclaimed and award-winning book. 

Those of us who read newspaper remember James Brady, who wrote Page Six a Hollywood gossip column that ran every Sunday for 25 years on the last page of Parade magazine.

What few knew is that James Brady was a Marine officer who’d seen combat in the Korean War, and lived to write 13 fiction and five nonfiction books, with his autobiography, “The Coldest Winter” nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.              

Brady often described himself as “an immature 23-year old when I left for Korea, but when I left nine months later I was a grown-up and a pretty good Marine officer,” and reading his story, you’ll see this ‘pretty good Marine officer’ became a ‘pretty fine author.’                               

Brady concentrates on the Marines in his unit and his growth as an officer in leading them. Except for ‘Saving Private Ryan and few others, combat isn’t near as glorious or macho as… show more.

World War I caused 20 million deaths and left 21 million wounded.

Soldiers who survived the gas attacks and trench warfare often returned to societies eager to forget the atrocities of the conflict and move on. Remarque’s insightfully written novel details the struggles of three German soldiers who return home only to discover that they may have no place in a nation that has learned almost nothing from what they regard as a senseless and immoral war.

In May of 1933, this novel and the rest of Remarque's writing were declared “unpatriotic” by the Nazi dictatorship and all his novels were banned.

The culmination of the trilogy, The Ghost Road, continues Barker’s exploration of the morality of war as the war draws to an end.  Dr. Rivers’ successful treatment of Billy Prior has resulted in Prior’s return to the front where he prepares to enter the war’s final battles, detailing his experiences in a diary.  Rivers’ himself continues to care for patients while revisiting pivotal scenes from his own past.  

Paschall brings to this book his insightful experience of army organizations and war as an infantry officer and veteran of the Vietnam conflagration. Readers can follow in detail the allied offensives of 1917, Germany’s last gasp effort to win on the Western Front in 1918 after Russia’s collapse in the east, and the retreat and breakdown of the once impressive German army in the waning months of the war.  

I once wrote a short book about the Queen, Elizabeth II, Queen of Laughs, a bestseller in French, so they now think I’m a royal expert and invite me on TV and radio to comment on any royal event. When the Queen died, I was in the French media nonstop for two weeks.

After this marathon, I got a phone call from a lady: “I saw you on French TV; you’re the kind of speaker we like to invite to our museum.” She explained that it was the former home of James Norman Hall. I asked where it was. 

“Tahiti.”

“Oh yes, I think I could find time to give a talk there.”

I’d never read any of Hall’s books, so I started at the beginning, and he was an eye-opener. Here was a young American who, in 1914, volunteered as a private in the British army and spent… show more.