Oxford The First World War Howard Michael

We remember months, because months have names, because they are linked to the seasons, and because they have their own character. Looking at the First World War month by month reveals its complexity while preserving a sense of time • From the opening shots to the signing of the armistice, the First World War lasted almost 52 months. It was fought on land, sea and in the air. It became industrial, and unrestricted: poison gas, aerial bombing of cities, and the sinking without warning of merchantmen and passenger ships by submarines • Casualties, military and civilian, probably exceeded 40 million. Four empires collapsed during the course of the war – the German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman • The First World War is almost impossible to comprehend

Take a journey to a vanished world with the Adventures in Time series - stories so exciting you won't believe they're all true • 'The whistles blew, the cheers went up, and thousands of men were scrambling up into the rolling fields of No Man's Land . . .' • Travel back in time to The First World War, as historian Dominic Sandbrook takes us from the soaring heights of an aeroplane cockpit to the desperate depths of the enemy trenches. We are plunged first hand into a conflict like no other as, amid the greatest clash of empires ever known, the future of the world hangs in the balance • The Adventures in Time series brings the past alive for twenty-first century children. These stories are every bit as exciting as those of Harry Potter or Matilda Wormwood

Selected from the work of soldiers killed in action - starting with Rupert Brooke in 1915 and ending with the tragic loss of Wilfred Owen seven days before the Armistice - the poems capture a broad range of emotions and states of mind, ranging from anthems about the brutality of war to wistful evocations of home and loved ones left behind • Few people alive today had direct experience of the First World War, and yet it seems embedded in the collective consciousness of the combatant nations as a warning to future generations of the futility of military conflict. Our awareness of the terror, loneliness and desperate hope endured by the men who fought this war we owe to the quality of the art that came out of it, not least the poetry. Despite the passage of time, its ability to move and inspire us remains undimmed, as this superb new compilation richly demonstrates

By the end of the First World War, the whereabouts of more than half a million British soldiers were unknown. Most were presumed dead, lost forever under the battlefields of northern France and Flanders • In The Searchers, Robert Sackville-West brings together the extraordinary, moving accounts of those who dedicated their lives to the search for the missing. These stories reveal the remarkable lengths to which people will go to give meaning to their loss: Rudyard Kipling's quest for his son's grave; E.M. Forster's conversations with traumatised soldiers in hospital in Alexandria; desperate attempts to communicate with the spirits of the dead; the campaign to establish the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior; and the exhumation and reburial in military cemeteries of hundreds of thousands of bodies

In the annals of military history, the Western Front stands as an enduring symbol of the folly and futility of war • However, as bestselling military historian Nick Lloyd reveals in this highly-praised history - the first of an epic trilogy -- the story is not one of pointlessness and stupidity, but rather a heroic triumph against the odds. With a cast of hundreds and a huge canvas of places and events, Lloyd tells the whole tale, revealing what happened in France and Belgium between August 1914 and November 1918 from the perspective of all the main combatants - including French, British, Belgian, US and, most importantly, German forces • Lloyd examines the most decisive campaigns of the Great War and explains the unprecedented innovation, adaptation and tactical development that have been too long obscured by legends of mud, blood and futility, drawing upon the latest scholarship on the war, wrongly overlooked first-person accounts, and archival material from every angle

An anthology of Great War short stories by British writers, both famous and lesser-known authors, men and women, during the war and after its end. These stories are able to illustrate the impact of the Great War on British society and culture and the many modes in which short fiction contributed to the war's literature. The selection covers different periods: the war years themselves, the famous boom years of the late 1920s to the more recent past in which the First World War has received new cultural interest

From the great cities of Europe to the jungles of Burma, and from the deserts of North Africa to the remote islands of the South Pacific and the freezing waters of the Arctic, the Second World War touched every continent and ocean on the planet. And from the Blitzkrieg to the atom bomb, the fighting fuelled new technological development on land, at sea and in the air at a ferocious pace. Our future was forged by war • Combining compelling personal stories with a clear and accessible appreciation of the strategic and operational battle for supremacy between the Allies and the Axis powers, bestselling historian James Holland weaves an irresistible narrative, with over 250 illustrations by acclaimed artist Keith Burns, commissioned specially for this project

A ground-breaking new study brings us a very different picture of the Second World War, asking fundamental questions about ethical commitments • Accounts of the Second World War usually involve tales of bravery in battle, or stoicism on the home front, as the British public stood together against Fascism. However, the war looks very different when seen through the eyes of the 60,000 conscientious objectors who refused to take up arms and whose stories, unlike those of the First World War, have been almost entirely forgotten • Tobias Kelly invites us to spend the war five of these individuals: Roy Ridgway, a factory clerk from Liverpool; Tom Burns, a teacher from east London; Stella St John, who trained as a vet and ended up in jail; Ronald Duncan, who set up a collective farm; and Fred Urquhart, a working-class Scottish socialist and writer

Poems from the Second World War is a moving and powerful collection of poems written by soldiers, nurses, mothers, sweethearts and family and friends who experienced WWII from different standpoints • The Imperial War Museum was founded in 1917 to collect and display material relating to the 'Great War', which was still being fought. Today IWM is unique in its coverage of conflicts, especially those involving Britain and the Commonwealth, from the First World War to the present. They seek to provide for, and to encourage, the study and understanding of the history of modern war and wartime experience

Take a journey to a vanished world with the ADVENTURES IN TIME* series - stories so exciting you won't believe they're all true • Prepare to enter the most dramatic conflict the world has ever seen, as historian Dominic Sandbrook takes us on a spine-tingling, heart-stopping adventure. We witness the Second World War first-hand through the eyes of ordinary people living in extraordinary times, from the women who worked all night in factories to the chess players who cracked unbreakable codes. Because in total war, no life is left untouched • The Adventures in Time series brings the past alive for twenty-first century children. These stories are every bit as exciting as those of Harry Potter or Matilda Wormwood. The only difference is they actually happened

A clear and informative account of how the Second World War began, the infamous battles and the conclusion and aftermath of the war • Illustrated with maps, evocative archive photographs and illustrations • Includes descriptions of the most famous events including Pearl Harbor, Battle of Midway, D-Day and the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki • Part of series three of the Usborne Reading Programme for children whose reading ability and confidence allows them to tackle longer and more complex information • Produced in association with the Imperial War Museum, London

From award-winning historian Saul David, an action-packed and powerful new narrative of the Battle of Okinawa - the last great clash of the Second World War, and one that had profound consequences for the modern world • For eighty-three blood-soaked days, the fighting on the island of Okinawa plumbed depths of savagery as bad as anything seen on the Eastern Front. When it was over, almost a quarter of a million people had lost their lives, making it by far the bloodiest US battle of the Pacific. In Okinawa, the death toll included thousands of civilians lost to mass suicide, convinced by Japanese propaganda that they would otherwise be raped and murdered by the enemy. On the US side, David argues that the horror of the battle ultimately determined President Truman's choice to use atomic bombs in August 1945