A brilliant and penetrating new history of the First World War by one of the world's foremost experts on the conflict.Reissued with a new introduction from the author. The popular view of the First World War is dominated by cliché: young British soldiers, many of them budding poets, led to early and ghastly deaths in muddy wastes by incompetent generals for reasons that were seemingly futile.As this magisterial new one volume history of the war illustrates, however, the cliché is only part of the truth.Hew Strachan argues that the war had become a ‘world war’ long before the involvement of the United States, and that for those liberal countries struggling to defend their freedoms, the war was far from futile.Accessible, compelling and utterly convincing, this is modern history writing at its finest. Accessible, compelling and utterly convincing, this is modern history writing at its finest.