The First World War
A Complete History
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Narrated by:
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Roger Clark
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Written by:
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Martin Gilbert
About this listen
It was to be the war to end all wars, and it began at 11:15 on the morning of June 28, 1914, in an outpost of the Austro-Hungarian Empire called Sarajevo. It would officially end nearly five years later. Unofficially, however, it has never ended: Many of the horrors we live with today are rooted in the First World War.
The Great War left millions of civilians and soldiers maimed or dead. It also saw the creation of new technologies of destruction: tanks, planes, and submarines; machine guns and field artillery; poison gas and chemical warfare. It introduced U-boat packs and strategic bombing, unrestricted war on civilians and mistreatment of prisoners. But the war changed our world in far more fundamental ways than these.
In its wake, empires toppled, monarchies fell, and whole populations lost their national identities. As political systems and geographic boundaries were realigned, the social order shifted seismically. Manners and cultural norms; literature and the arts; education and class distinctions; all underwent a vast sea change.
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Performance
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What listeners say about The First World War
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- fraser
- 2024-07-02
Enlightening
Difficult to listen to, the narrators pronunciation of certain words completely baffled me...the word is 'new' not 'noo' and the General was called Haig, not HIGH-G. Weird, but i learned a lot about the war.
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- Dan W
- 2024-09-16
Fantastic book, great narration (apart from the pronunciation errors)
This is an excellent survey of the Great War: comprehensive, unsparing and vividly capturing the human cost, illustrating the immense scale of the tragedy with countless individual stories. The narrator has a splendid voice that matches the gravity of the subject matter. It’s unfortunate that the quality control with pronunciation was so poor, though. Many words are spoken quirkily (e.g. “fetid”, “invalided”, “obsequies”) and some place names in France and Belgium are incorrect (“mons”, “vosges”). British place names are given literally, in a way no British person would (“Salisbury”, “Harwich”, “Scilly”). As much as it’s surprising that no one corrected any of these, it’s particularly amazing that someone would read a 30-hour history of the First World War without getting the name Haig right. No one supervising this recording knew the correct pronunciation of one of the conflict’s most notable participants? It does take the edge off an otherwise outstanding product and tends to suggest that you just hire an actor and let them guess.
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- Xyo
- 2022-07-25
Eye opening
Simply incredible. The attention to detail, the personal stories, the poems, the overview of events. It is clear a great deal of research went into the writing of this book, and I could not imagine a better narrator to present it either.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Bob Abrams
- 2023-01-15
Excellent
As a one-volume book covering such a vast conflict it’s hard to imagine this being bettered.
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- leca897
- 2023-11-19
Great listen
Well read book. Gave a very interesting story of the start of and ending of the First World War.
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- Kevin W.
- 2024-07-30
Narrator was very good and did a great job in telling the story in the book, especially the non-English names, places etc.
I've read a number of WW1 books and this us right up there with the best. Really good structure in how it blends together historical narrative, the thinking of the Generals, first-hand accounts from soldiers as well as including tidbits of poetry and related art and media surrounding the Great War. It also includes the non-Western front perspective for a truly complete narrative of the war.
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- Wade Swazey
- 2023-07-04
Great listen.
Very informative. I enjoyed! Good narration as well. Includes famous poems and such written during ww1
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- Matthew laing
- 2021-07-25
good book
I was recommended this book by the great war videos and Indy Neidell's videos
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2 people found this helpful
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- Tabitha B
- 2023-10-04
Amazing book, painfully slow narration
Loved this history! However, I had to speed up the book to 1.7 to make it even sound close to normal speed! The narrator is very slow in speaking. If anyone else is struggling to get through, that was helpful to me to speed it up!
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- F150 Guy
- 2024-02-05
very detailed for the people on the front lines
it's a good description of the meat grinder WWI was but honestly it gets repetitive.Battle after battle is described and they blend into one with only little tip bits of new information learned. I listened to 75% of the book and haven't finished it yet. Not sure if I will.
the narration is very good and it's easy to listen to in that regard, even if the stories are gruesome.
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