A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918 Paperback – May 29, 2007

I recently finished reading “A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918” by G.J. Meyer, and I was thoroughly impressed. This book offers a comprehensive and engaging account of World War I, making it accessible to both history enthusiasts and casual readers alike.Pros:Detailed and Well-Researched: Meyer’s exhaustive research is evident throughout the book, providing a thorough understanding of the events and their impact.Engaging Narrative: The writing style is clear and compelling, making complex historical events easy to follow.Balanced Perspective: The book offers a balanced view of the war, covering multiple fronts and perspectives, which adds depth to the narrative.Instructive Value: It provides valuable insights into the political, social, and military aspects of the war, making it highly educational12.Cons:Lengthy: At over 700 pages, it can be quite a commitment, which might be daunting for some readers.Dense Information: The level of detail, while impressive, can sometimes be overwhelming, especially for those new to the subject3.Overall, “A World Undone” is a remarkable book that offers a vivid and comprehensive look at World War I. Highly recommended for anyone interested in understanding this pivotal period in history. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

This was a great read! I was able to follow along very well and I had just a small understanding of war. I knew the main causes and players, but this book talks about the progression of the war, main battles as well as the generals. I didnt find it very biased and felt that both sides of the war were told well... and actually with empathy for both parties involved. I also read this authors other book and it was a great follow up

G. W. Meyer takes on an enormous task in this book. He tries to tell not just what happened leading up to and through WWI, but the important historical background to give the events context. He pairs a Background chapter with what we can call each 'Events' chapter. This is an extremely creative way to write about what is already a huge tableau. It provides the unfamiliar reader some context, but is inevitably frustrating to those who have gone deeper. By the structure of the work, Meyer has taken on the task, for example, of summarizing the over 1000 year history of the Hapsburg Empire in ten or fifteen pages. So, over-generalizations and the occasional plain error creep in. For an example, at one point Meyer states that Russia had never been made to compromise with other European states--apparently glossing over their defeats by Napoleon and the entire Crimean War. These grate on the reader who has read more on each of these Background chapters.That being said, in a book for a general audience for whom this is perhaps their first introduction to European history of the period, this is an enormous achievement. Meyer takes a lens from far above what is happening, attempting to show the over-arching reasons why certain things happened. He is more likely to discuss the idea of Ludendorff creating a flexible defense, rather than having troops in a rigid and fixed front line, than he is to talk about what happened at a certain hill or dale. You get the overview--why were the Germans almost successful in 1918 after years of stalemate--rather than they took this town or this fort. When a city is mentioned, he tells you why this place was important. For example, Amiens is where most of the French Railways came together and had the town been lost, France would not have been able to move troops and might have needed an armistice.The book reads easily and crisply. Meyer never loses sight of the enormous human cost of each campaign, and often puts this in a modern context--Losses for both sides in Passchendale were 3 times or 6 times (the detail escapes me at this moment) what the U.S. lost in the entire Vietnam War. He provides interesting and useful character sketches of the major players, each of whom has of course spawned multiple full length biographies.If you've done no reading on this subject, this book is highly recommended. I passed it on to my wife who is explicitly NOT interested in history, thinking that this way of telling the story of the cosmic changes wrought by this period might actually grab her.For those who want to go deeper, certainly Barbara Tuchman's 'Guns of August' is a masterpiece. John Keegan's 'The First World War' is excellent on the military side. For those who are interested in how and why the apparently mighty Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed, Frederic Morton has two wonderful books, 'A Nervous Splendor' covering the late 1800's, and 'Thunder at Twilight' covering that Empire in 1913-14.World War I was the death knell of one kind of civilization and the launching of several competing models of other ways to organize a national community. It deserves study, and this work is an excellent start.

The year 2014 will mark the 100th anniversary of the beginning of World War I. Also known as "The Great War" and "The War to End All Wars," the First World War was one of the bloodiest and most violent wars in human history. Any understanding of the war-torn twentieth century begins with an understanding of World War I - why it began, how it was fought, and what effect it has had on humanity since it ended.One of the best recent books about World War I is "A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914-1918" by G.J. Meyer. Published in 2007, this book provides a fresh and comprehensive look at the Great War from its beginning in 1914 until its end four years later. In nearly every respect, "A World Undone" is a superb work of history.G.J. Meyer, an American who now resides in Great Britain, is a journalist and historian who has written several excellent books. "A World Undone" is probably his best work. He employs a lively and incisive writing style in narrating the events of World War I, from its earliest days in the summer of 1914, when young Serbian anarchist Gavrilo Princip ignited the war by assassinating Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, to the war's final days in November 1918, when tatterdemalion German armies streamed out of France and back into Germany.Meyer provides comprehensive coverage of nearly every front in this genuinely world-wide war. While most people today associate World War I with mud-caked soldiers bleeding in the trenches of the western front in France, there were many other fronts as well. In eastern Europe, along the border between Germany and Russia, there were scenes of savage combat as Russian armies attempted to invade Germany and were repulsed at the battle of Tannenberg. In the Balkans, a bitter war raged between Austria, the Ottoman Empire (Turkey), and Bulgaria on one side, and Serbia, Italy, Greece, and Britain on the other. Meyer provides excellent descriptions of individual battles and the soldiers who fought them. He takes his readers into the world of a starkly barren, cratered "no-man's land," where poison gas, colossal artillery bombardments, and massed infantry assaults against nearly impregnable defenses were the order of each day.Meyer pays particular attention to the political wrangling that occurred between leaders on both sides of the conflict. The many and deep divisions particularly within the German, French, British, and Russian high commands make for fascinating reading.Meyer alternates each narrative chapter with a chapter that gives readers deeper background information about a particular aspect of the war. For example, there are background chapters devoted to the Hapsburgs and the Hohenzollerns, the royal families of Austria and Germany respectively. There are also chapters that cover the role of women in the war; trench warfare; and London and Paris in 1914. I found these and other background chapters very interesting and enlightening indeed.If there is one flaw in "A World Undone," it is that it covers certain aspects of the war in very scant detail. Although Meyer discusses the importance of Germany's U-boat campaign against Britain, he provides only scant detail about the rest of the war at sea. (the battle of Jutland - the last great surface engagement between battleships in history - is barely mentioned in passing.) He also doesn't provide coverage of the war in Africa. I suppose this was done to hold an already massive book (over 800 pages) to one volume of a manageable size, but it's too bad some of these areas were either touched upon very lightly or omitted altogether.Despite these minor flaws, "A World Undone" is an outstanding work of history that provides readers with fresh and deeper insights into the causes, effects, and events of what we now know was not "the war to end all wars." Highly recommended!