Benable — create shareable lists of things you recommend!
E.g., products you love, local businesses, travel recs - you can add anything to a Benable list!
The Crucible of War: 15 Best WW1 Books on the Balkans, Italy & Gallipoli
15
items The Balkans were the crucible of the Great War. It started on a street corner in Sarajevo, and some of its fiercest fighting happened in places most of us never learned about at school: the Serbian hills, the Alps above the Isonzo, Gallipoli and the ...
Sections
3
SARAJEVO & THE BALKANS: THE CRUCIBLE
WAR IN THE ALPS: THE ITALIAN FRONT
GALLIPOLI, ARABIA & THE FALL OF THE OTTOMANS
SARAJEVO & THE BALKANS: THE CRUCIBLE
A shot in Sarajevo, an ultimatum to Serbia and a continent at war within weeks. These books take you to the crucible itself: the Balkans in 1914.
Butcher retraces Gavrilo Princip's journey through Bosnia to Sarajevo. Part travel book, part history, and the geography of the Balkans finally makes sense.
The Trigger by Tim Butcher
A Rest Is History favourite on the weeks between Sarajevo and the guns. How a Balkan murder became a world war, capital by capital and telegram by telegram.
July Crisis by T. G. Otte
Another Rest Is History recommendation. The first months of the war, including the Serbian campaign where Austria-Hungary was humiliated. Hastings at his most readable.
Catastrophe 1914 by Max Hastings
Four centuries of Bosnian history told through one Ottoman bridge, ending as it is blown up in 1914. Nobel Prize-winning, and the best way into the Balkans.
The Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andrić
A vast, brilliant journey through Yugoslavia in the late 1930s, with Sarajevo 1914 at its heart. Big, opinionated and unforgettable.
Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West
WAR IN THE ALPS: THE ITALIAN FRONT
Eleven battles on the Isonzo, then the collapse at Caporetto, fought on limestone plateaus and mountain ridges. Start with The White War, my number one pick, then read the men who were there.
My number one pick. Twelve battles on the Isonzo, fought up limestone ridges and across the Alps. As a cartographer I've never read a better account of terrain deciding a war, on a front most readers have never heard of.
The White War by Mark Thompson
Hemingway drove ambulances on the Italian front, and the retreat from Caporetto here is unforgettable. Read it straight after The White War and the map comes alive.
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Rommel's own account of his First World War, including his mountain battalion's climb at Caporetto. Written with sketch maps, and you can see him reading the ground.
Infantry Attacks by Erwin Rommel
An Italian officer's year on the Asiago plateau: suicidal attacks ordered by generals who never saw the ground. Darkly funny and furious, Italy's answer to Goodbye to All That.
A Soldier on the Southern Front by Emilio Lussu
The best modern history of how Italy fought, from the Isonzo to Vittorio Veneto. Clear on the strategy, the mountains and the men.
The Italian Army and the First World War by John Gooch
GALLIPOLI, ARABIA & THE FALL OF THE OTTOMANS
The Ottoman Empire's last war, from the beaches of Gallipoli to the Arab Revolt. The fronts that remade the Middle East.
The war from the Ottoman side, from Gallipoli to Mesopotamia and the desert. The best single book on how the Middle East we know was made.
The Fall of the Ottomans by Eugene Rogan
The classic narrative of the Dardanelles campaign. Moorehead is wonderful on the ground: the cliffs, gullies and ridges that the landings could never quite take.
Gallipoli by Alan Moorehead
A small Anatolian town where Christians and Muslims lived side by side, until the war and the end of empire tore it apart. Gallipoli seen from the Turkish trenches.
Birds Without Wings by Louis de Bernières
Lawrence of Arabia in his own words: the Arab Revolt, desert raids and the politics of empire. This is the 2000 Folio Society edition in near-fine condition, one for the shelf.
Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence (Folio Society)
Lawrence and the spies, schemers and oilmen around him. Gripping, and the perfect companion to Seven Pillars.
Lawrence in Arabia by Scott Anderson