The First World War: Nonfiction

WWI as represented by historians looking back on events.

A mix of both introductory and more academic texts.

Please feel free to recommend any good histories you know - whether the focus is a particular topic (eg. medicine), person, front, or battle. I have not read all of these books - if any are particularly poor or unsuitable, please let me know so I may remove them.

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created by alkaios

last updated October, 2026

54 books

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Black Poppies: Britain's Black Community and the Great War

Stephen Bourne

Black Tommies: British Soldiers of African Descent in the First World War

Ray Costello

Ordered to Die: A History of the Ottoman Army in the First World War (Contributions in Military Studies)

Edward J. Erickson

The Forgotten Front: The East African Campaign 1914-1918

Ross Anderson

The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians

Donald Bloxham

POWs and the Great War: Captivity on the Eastern Front (The Legacy of the Great War)

Alon Rachamimov

Fighting the Great War: A Global History (Polity Short Introductions)

Michael S. Neiberg

Army Uniforms of World War I: European and United States Armies and Aviation Services

Andrew Mollo

Somme

Lyn Macdonald

They Called It Passchendaele

Lyn Macdonald

The Roses of No Man's Land

Lyn Macdonald

German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial

John Horne

Stormtroop Tactics: Innovation in the German Army, 1914-1918

Bruce I. Gudmundsson

Battle Tactics of the Western Front: The British Army`s Art of Attack, 1916-18

Paddy Griffith

War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity, and German Occupation in World War I (Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare, Series Number 9)

Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius