The First World War

By: John Keegan

Narrated by: James Langton

Length: 20 hrs and 22 mins

Publisher's summary

The First World War created the modern world. A conflict of unprecedented ferocity, it abruptly ended the relative peace and prosperity of the Victorian era, unleashing such demons of the 20th century as mechanized warfare and mass death. It also helped to usher in the ideas that have shaped our times - modernism in the arts, new approaches to psychology and medicine, radical thoughts about economics and society - and in so doing shattered the faith in rationalism and liberalism that had prevailed in Europe since the Enlightenment. With The First World War, John Keegan, one of our most eminent military historians, fulfills a lifelong ambition to write the definitive account of the Great War for our generation.

Probing the mystery of how a civilization at the height of its achievement could have propelled itself into such a ruinous conflict, Keegan takes us behind the scenes of the negotiations among Europe's crowned heads (all of them related to one another by blood) and ministers, and their doomed efforts to defuse the crisis. He reveals how, by an astonishing failure of diplomacy and communication, a bilateral dispute grew to engulf an entire continent.

But the heart of Keegan's superb narrative is, of course, his analysis of the military conflict. With unequalled authority and insight, he recreates the nightmarish engagements whose names have become legend - Verdun, the Somme and Gallipoli among them - and sheds new light on the strategies and tactics employed, particularly the contributions of geography and technology. No less central to Keegan's account is the human aspect. He acquaints us with the thoughts of the intriguing personalities who oversaw the tragically unnecessary catastrophe - from heads of state like Russia's hapless tsar, Nicholas II, to renowned warmakers such as Haig, Hindenburg and Joffre. But Keegan reserves his most affecting personal sympathy for those whose individual efforts history has not recorded - "the anonymous millions, indistinguishably drab, undifferentially deprived of any scrap of the glories that by tradition made the life of the man-at-arms tolerable."

By the end of the war, three great empires - the Austro-Hungarian, the Russian and the Ottoman - had collapsed. But as Keegan shows, the devastation ex-tended over the entirety of Europe, and still profoundly informs the politics and culture of the continent today. His brilliant, panoramic account of this vast and terrible conflict is destined to take its place among the classics of world history.

©2012 John Keegan (P)2019 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"Eloquent.... Mr. Keegan captures the anamolous, even surreal quality of the war." —The New York Times

"The best one-volume account there is." —Civilization

"Elegantly written, clear, detailed, and omniscient.... Keegan is ...perhaps the best military historian of our day." —The New York Times Book Review

Must read for all students

This should be mandatory reading for all students. A very in-depth depiction of the Great War.

Thorough but interesting account of WWI

I thought I knew this history, but this book revealed I had much to learn.

Hard to know the forest from the trees at times

Without ready access to maps, it’s sometimes hard to follow the action since geography plays such a huge part in understanding this epic. Well read, but sometimes hard to
understand the big picture with all the moving parts — military, as well as political, social, and economic.

Facts and figures

It was devastating to hear the facts and figures for loss of life. I really appreciated how each of the sections was organized.

Best Military History of First World War

“So...what non-fiction book about The First World War should I read?”.

Answering this question is the purpose of this review.
I will review Keegan’s book in that light. This topic is so vast and there are so many BAD books that it is important to start with the right book to sustain your interest in the topic.

As of 2023, I own 45x books on The Great War (aka World War One); I can say that IMHO this is the best ‘single-volume MILITARY history’ of the First World War. This is no surprise since John Keegan is generally regarded as the gold standard for authors of military history. He is best known for his first book, the indisputable classic, ‘The Face of Battle’, and since then he had a stellar career with hit after hit in the military history genre. This book, THE FIRST WORLD WAR, was his most commercially successful book and for good reason... The only book which compares is "The Great War" by Peter Hart.
(Keegan gives a similar treatment to the 1861 American Civil War & 2003 Iraq War in audible titles.)

Now that I’ve established that this is the best single volume military history on the market in print or in audiobook, it is important to understand the areas where this book is surpassed by others due to a specialty different from military history or a difference in length or scope.

***For general readers with no background knowledge, who want a highly readable single-volume book on the WHOLE war, I highly recommend ‘A World Undone’ by G.J. Meyer as the best place to start.***

Other Best-in-Class Single-Volume NONFICTION books on Audible (in no particular order) are:
1. ‘Pandora’s Box’ (Leonhard) for GENERAL History... like Meyer’s book but longer.
2. ‘Over Here’ (Kennedy) for DOMESTIC aspects of the war as it affected the USA.
3. ‘Castles of Steel’ (Massie) for NAVAL history with a strict scope of the war years (1914-1918). This strict scope is because Massie already wrote a classic on the PRE-war naval arms race between Great British Empire and German Empire called *DREADNOUGHT. Each title is thorough. Together, these two books represent a comprehensive naval history of the conflict which is very exciting and filled with personality.
*Note: Dreadnought is not yet available on Audible as of October 2023. (Note to Audible: Record DREADNOUGHT!)
4. ‘The Pity of War’ (Ferguson) for ECONOMIC history of the war. This is an excellent book, but its thesis is beyond the bounds of descriptive history and goes into the realm of "Great Britain never should have fought this war..." Many historians dislike this alternative timeline view of history for good reason, but that doesn't take away from the author's accomplishment.
5. ‘July 1914’ (McMeekin) for the JULY CRISIS which precipitated the war’s outbreak. This is a well-researched forensic breakdown.
6. ‘The War That Ended Peace’ (MacMillan) on the JULY CRISIS but with a focus on the decades leading up to it, balancing factors leading to war vs. peace. Prior to this war, Europe had achieved a full century without a general conflict. Why was war the outcome of this crisis when peace had prevailed in so many previous European political crises? Both proximate and ultimate causes are considered.
7. ‘Paris 1919’ (MacMillan) for the definitive history of the war’s CONCLUSION and the diplomatic calculus behind closed doors at the Paris peace conference which settled this brutal war.
8. ‘The Long Shadow’ (Reynolds) for LONG TERM IMPACT of the war in Europe & Russia leading to the Second World War, in the Middle East where today’s problems were born, and in bringing the USA into the world stage.
9. ‘The First World War’ (Gilbert) is the whole war (like Meyer), but with a relentless focus on notable individual accounts. Recommended for readers who typically enjoy fiction books since this is like 500x very short vivid accounts supporting the overall story of the war.
10. ‘The Guns of August’ (Tuchman) for an account of the JULY CRISIS and the OUTBREAK of the war (first month). A highly readable classic. Probably the most famous WW1 non-fiction book.
11. ‘The Great War in Modern Memory’ (Fussell) for analysis of the war’s impact on culture, literature, film, poetry, vocabulary, and values. This is a niche book but considered a classic of the criticism genre.

Book #10 & #11 regularly make Top 100 all-time lists for English non-fiction titles.

John Keegan’s book covers all of these angles in depths which vary from several pages to a whole chapter and I never felt like he skimped on a topic too much. He did a great job balancing many aspects in a single volume.

Audible vs. Hardcover
John Keegan’s writing style contains many modifying phrases (and modifiers of a modifier) so it can be difficult to comprehend sentence structure on a first pass. Audible fixes this problem by the performer’s speaking style and intonation. He reads it the way the author intentded on the first pass. This is one aspect where the Audible spoken version is clearly superior to the written version... for me. Here is an example from page 52...
“Had Austria moved at once, therefore, without seeking Germany’s endorsement, it is possible, perhaps probable, that the Serbs would have found themselves as isolated strategically as, initially, they were morally, and so forced to capitulate to the Austrian ultimatum.” (I have to read that sort of sentence twice but a narrator glides me through it just as the author intended.)

Other excellent titles of interest NOT available by Audible (yet):
World Crisis (Churchill; Note that Audible only has the first of the five volumes.), My Experience in the World War (American Supreme Commander: Pershing), Coming of the War 1914 (Schmitt), Triple Alliance and Triple Entente (Schmitt 1934...VERY SHORT), Dreadnought (Massie), Ring of Steel (Watson), July 1914 (Geiss).
Note: These first 4 titles were written during the interwar period so authors have no knowledge of the looming Second World War. This makes for a different perspective from post-1940 titles.

I hope this review helps put some context around John Keegan’s excellent book about a grand historical topic.

If you like the way Mr. Keegan writes, I recommend his other books, especially ‘The Face of Battle’ and ‘A History of War’... both available on Audible.

An incredible look into the past

The narration of the story was first class. Never knowing much about the first world war, this book gave me a detailed look into how it began, the different reasons for every nation involved as well as a firm and clear description of battle plans and outcomes for all sides. I would recommend this book for anyone who loves history who does not know much about the first world war. It left me more knowledgeable than before and frankly more sad than ever before when discussing the first world war. Way too many lives lost and nothing resolved until 30 years later after the conclusion of the second world war.

Phase 1 of the 20th century war

I Ingrid presentation of what led to the Great War, which, in reality was phase 1 of the 20th century war. World war two was phase 2, and the cold war, phase 3. We have here presented a clear account of the lead up to this essentially unnecessary war. It is interesting to compare Keegan’s description of the events with Churchill’s the World Crisis. And Mr. Keegan’s account is more a big picture of you, while Churchill’s is more focused on the events in which he was a direct participant for the most part . Having listened to these two books, I am inspired to dig farther into the great war in which my grandfather participated on the western front with an artillery battery. He was partially disabled as a result of a gas attack.

the excellent narrative

Great book..Keegan is always a great read his scholarship is of the of the highest order...Highly Recommend

Voluminous, though well-selected info

I find those histories easiest to follow that go in chronological order. While this book did that in a general way, it did hop around a bit, making it a little hard for me at times to get a sense of the plot, in an already complex war.

The narrator, while embibing most of his phrases with a sense of clear meaning, far too often effected his cadences in the same tapering off hum-drum lilt, which quite often was inappropriate to the drama of the actual words. Lada-de-da, and an entire brigade got wiped out.

A positive…it depends

Whether I would recommend this book or not depends on what the reader hopes to gain. If you want every little detail about the first world war, no matter how esoteric, this is your book. If you’re just curious about the first world war and want someone to hit the high points in the big ideas and concepts, this book is probably not for you. It is a fascinating and well researched tale but unless you are incredibly familiar with the geography of Europe it is hard to follow along in audiobook format without a map. If you are truly fascinated by the history of the first world war and want to study it I would highly recommend this book in hardback format.