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Entente, The - World War I Battlefields Cheats. PC| Submitted by GamesRadar Various Cheats. During gameplay press Ctrl + Shift + H and press: G - Attack with gas at cursor. K - Attack at cursor using artillery. F - Show map. Shift + 1 - 0 - Call in units.

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The Western Front, a 400-plus mile stretch of land weaving through France and Belgium from the Swiss border to the North Sea, was the decisive front during the First World War. Whichever side won there – either the Central Powers or the Entente – would be able to claim victory for their respective alliance.

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Preview — A World Undone by G.J. Meyer

The First World War is one of history's greatest tragedies. In this remarkable and intimate account, author G. J. Meyer draws on exhaustive research to bring to life the story of how the Great War reduced Europe’s mightiest empires to rubble, killed twenty million people, and cracked the foundations of the world we live in today.

Published May 30th 2006 by Delacorte Press (first published 2006)

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World War I Articles

rated it really liked it

Shelves: one-damn-thing-after-another, politics-by-other-means, eurotrip

G. J. Meyer set out to write this book to fill a gap in the available literature on the First World War: a popular, holistic account that covered every phase and every front, without presupposing much knowledge from the reader. In this, he was undeniably successful. A World Undone begins at the beginning, with the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, and ends at the end, with the Treaty of Versailles—signed five years to the day of the assassination of the infamous archduke.
Meyer’s scheme is simple...more

Sep 18, 2014Dawn rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: history, read-2014, non-fiction, audiobook

I admittedly read very little non-fiction, I unfortunately get bogged down in the detail and lack of story and thus restrict myself to specific subjects that I find fascinating. WWI is one of those.
I didn't realize that I knew so little about WWI until I read this book.
It seems impossible to understand WWII without knowing this war and the politics that started and ended it.
For a war that had and has so many repercussions for Europe, it amazes me that I didn't know more.
The author did a fantas...more

Dec 11, 2018Sweetwilliam rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I typically prefer books that are written about a single battle or campaign and I tend to gravitate towards the ones written from the soldier’s point of view. For a World Undone, I’ll make an exception. This is probably the finest comprehensive book that I have ever read about any war. Maybe it was the perfect book for my level of understanding and I am sure the timing was ripe. You see, I was inspired by a recent visit to Ypres where I witnessed the playing of the Last Post at the Menin Gate. I...more

Sep 14, 2018Ms.pegasus rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: history, nonfiction

The passage of time has, for most of us, petrified our knowledge of World War I into an amalgam of abstractions. First there are the memorial markers standing as solemn tributes, the centerpiece, perhaps, of annual ceremonies commemorating this or that horrific battle. The result is at best a kind of static communion between observer and marker. It is impossible to process the multiple perspectives and emotional tenor that fueled the dynamic of World War I. Even the questions which seek to affix...more

Aug 04, 2014The Pirate Ghost (Formerly known as the Curmudgeon) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fictoin, military, audio-book, history

This is a great one volume history of The Great War. The author takes the time to fill in the background and uses quotes from soldiers on both sides that tell what life was really like in the trenches. If War is Hell, then this war, World War One, is the biggest hell of the mall. It started as a dysfunctional royal family feud and ended with millions dead.
As I listened to the numbers on the butcher's bill I remembered Carl Sandburg's 'The Grass.'
The Grass
by Carl Sandburg
'Pile the bodies high a...more

Doing research for the sequel to my novel I started reading a number of histories of World War I. This is simply put: an amazing single volume history of the war, its causes, and course of events (but not the post-treaty fallout). I've read hundreds (or more) of history books, and as single volume war histories go -- this is excellent. I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to understand the world we live in, because the modern political arena was forged in World War I (far more than WWII). The of...more

Jan 31, 2019Bryan Craig rated it really liked it · review of another edition

The best general one-volume history of WWI that I have read. It is more Euro-centric, but Meyer does delve into battle fronts in the Middle East and the east. I love his background segments at the end of each chapter that drills down on a particular topic.
The book stays on strategy and when he gets into battles, it hits the right tone as Meyer doesn't get bogged down in long battle details. You really get a sense of the vast tragedy and waste this war placed on the earth. Highly recommend.

Nov 21, 2013Joe rated it it was amazing

If you're looking for an excellent history of The Great War or simply a great non-fiction book you've found it. In a nutshell what makes this book work is its balance, not necessarily in its handling of events and personalities - the author has no problem critiquing policies, people and decisions - but in the flow of the narrative. Meyer does an excellent job jockeying among the battlefields, world capitals, politicians, civilians, soldiers and generals, economies, technologies and much more wit...more

May 14, 2017Tony rated it really liked it

Straight forward, very readable summary of WW1, focusing on the big picture. The author handles it all well, seamlessly switching between theatres without it all getting too confusing. Every other chapter is a short 'background' section covering topics that might otherwise get overlooked - the royal families, new technology, poetry, women in the war, etc. which I thought worked really well. The evolution of infantry tactics is also well explained. This would probably make a good first book on WW...more

May 31, 2017Kate rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

World War I, keeps drawing readers back to texts and stories that cover this period, because it could have been easily prevented if only Europe hadn't bee ruled by so many unsuited, disengaged and self serving rulers trying desperately to keep hold of of a world view when the the entire world had already shifted. This was an excellent read because of the scope of the undertaking and the efforts to tell the backstory of not only the history of the countries and those who ruled them, but the backs...more

My wife and I drove the Western Front last fall - a trip I heartily recommend. To prepare, we read a lot about the Great War. The past few years have offered a rich feast of books about the war and while I have made great progress, I still have a few to go. After reading a lot, I have become very impressed when I run across exceptional one volume treatments of the war in its entirety. This was not only a hugely complex chain of events, but also a seminal event that seems to have influenced nearl...more

World War I Summary

Apr 18, 2018Karmologyclinic rated it it was amazing

A long time ago I went on a road trip around Holland and Belgium. In the time before GPS, we took the itineraries of the Dutch Automobile Association (or something like that, forgive me, I forget) and one of them was passing through all the major battlefields of WWI. Thus, the photo below, a french cemetery (among the 170 total cemeteries found at Ypres). It is an understatement to say that the whole region is a cemetery. I knew little about WWI then. I remember driving speechless and music-less...more

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Feb 26, 2017Susan O rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: history-world, 2017-read, ww1, history-favorites

Excellent and very readable overview of World War I. I came in to this book with only bits and pieces of knowledge about the war which I had picked up from various other books such as biographies of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, and world history classes from many years ago. This was the perfect book to begin filling in those gaps. I think it lays a great foundation to build on in learning more about the war. Meyer has a very nice style of writing that made reading the book a pleasure....more

I’m not sure precisely what fascinates me about military history. I really don’t need to continue to read it to be confirmed in my belief that the human race is capable of the most incredible stupidity; political evens suffice for that. But read it I do, and A World Undone is the latest in my efforts to understand why human beings continue to pursue such self-evidently destructive and almost always useless endeavors; wars usually do nothing more than pave the way for future wars.
I’ve read other...more

Feb 28, 2016Jerry-Book rated it it was amazing

Having read other books on WW I, I was familiar with the subject before reading this book. Nonetheless, I found this book to be the best introduction to WW I. The author presents excellent background for each topic. For example, he shows: the origins of Serbian unrest that led to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, why the War was not confined to just the Balkans, the antiquated British military system that created inept military leaders such as Generals French and Haig, the French mi...more

May 28, 2018Cindy Rollins rated it really liked it

Excellent in-depth look at the war to end all wars. I especially loved the background sections. Perhaps a little too detailed for a first look at the war but definitely one to read after you have the big picture.

Dec 12, 2018Adam rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: long, narration-4-star, history, read-2018, audiobook, nonfiction, story-5-star, overdrive

Review of the audiobook narrated by Robin Sachs.
Even though a war in Europe around the time of World War I is said to have been inevitable, I found the circumstances that started the war to be more sad than anything. WWI is nothing like WWII (where there was a clear 'bad guy' with the Nazi party) in that nearly all of the participants in the war share some of the blame for why it started in the first place. Without those many mistakes and misunderstandings happening like dominoes the deaths of s...more

An incredibly dense but amazingly clear and concise history. There is no filler, no vagaries of interest, no nonsense. The author states in the foreword that he felt there was never a singular and definitive tome on the first world war, that the subject was so vast that historians tend to focus on certain aspects of it; his goal, therefore, was to write this book for people who hope to know all of the war in one (giant) piece. Mission accomplished! Furthermore, the author knows so instinctively...more

Oct 18, 2018A. L. Sowards rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audio-book, history-wwi, nonfiction, history-1900s, 2018

I’ve read a few one-volume accounts of WWI, and I think this is my favorite of those. (This was an audiobook and the others I read, but I don’t think the format influenced my opinion.) I loved that it was chronological, but also had in-depth sections on background information and themes that stretched across the war—everything from the Romanovs to propaganda to women’s roles and Cossacks. This one was highly readable and explained things well enough for beginners in the subject, but also added t...more

Aug 27, 2017Marko rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Amazingly detailed and astute analysis of the Great War
This book should be required reading for college level history. It describes in detail the events that would shape European history for the next hundred years. Everything would have been different without WWI, which toppled four empires and seeded resentments that would trigger WWII and result in the Cold War. Amazing, infuriating, enlightening read.

Feb 18, 2018Alla rated it it was amazing

A world undone. There is no better title for this book. At the end of WWI four great empires ceased to exist. The war redrafted the map of Europe and left painful wounds and scars that hurt still.
Let me start by saying that this book is the first non-fiction book that made me cry, that I couldn’t put down and one Friday evening I was reading it till 3am (btw I am an early sleeper). And… Now I feel that I knew nothing about that war. I didn’t have a huge gap, no. But my mind was full of illusions...more

May 05, 2018Nathaniel rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This was the best history of World War I I've ever read. Unfortunately, I'm writing the review 4 months after I finished the book, so my impressions are not as sharp as they were.
The main thing I learned from the book is how tragically unavoidable the War was, in many ways, and how little it had to do with the assassination of the Archduke. That was definitely the most interesting part to me, learning how the divergent interests of the major players--especially the rogue Austro-Hungarians, dragg...more

Oct 09, 2013Max rated it really liked it

Why read about WWI? It is amazingly complex and deeply disturbing. WWI transformed the world into the one we recognize today, but perhaps even more relevant is the way it exposed self-serving failed leadership that fed political, religious and national divisions; tactics and behavior that we also recognize today. Apparently while the map changed greatly with new boundaries and new countries, not much has changed with the human race and its leaders in the 100 years since.
In 1914, the world’s vol...more

Aug 11, 2016Ghost of the Library rated it it was amazing

unlike most people of my generation whose historic interest always seems to drift towards WWII, i have always found myself drawn towards the war to end all wars, mostly because i increasingly believe that it is the root of many of the problems that Europe and the world by extension face today.
Over the years i read many books, watched countless documentaries and always felt that the writers/authors either did something 100% military or 100% political...the balance between the many aspects of this...more

Aug 25, 2018Kurt rated it really liked it

Wow. This took me almost two months to finish. Yes, it was long -- over 700 pages, and it was very detailed and complex in telling a very intricate and complex story, and, yes, I had a lot going on in the way of vacations and travels over the past two months. But the main reason it took me so long to finish was because the story was fascinating and I really wanted to be reasonably well-informed about the Great War upon completion of this book.
Like probably most Americans, my knowledge of World...more

World War I Battlefield Maps

Oct 27, 2012Lise Petrauskas rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: history, 21st-century-non-fiction, audiobook, non-fiction, narration-par-excellence

I'm really impressed with G.J. Meyer after having now read two of his histories. A World Undone is the devastating story of The Great War, the history of which I only cursorily knew until now. This is not an exhaustive work, but one for the general reader to understand the social forces, individuals, and ideas that made the war possible. I like the format Meyer used of interrupting the main narrative, which followed the war's timeline, with chapters that gave background information, such as a ch...more

May 20, 2015Jason Aldous rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

As good as one volume can get for such a gigantic subject
World War 1 has always held a special fascination for me.for one thing Americans care to know little about it because American troops didn't get into the combat until the last 6 months or so of the war. Also, it was an era before TV and radio. I suspect even Americans living at that time must have understood little about it as well. Yet, it was the conflict that set in motion all the other conflicts of our time. It's causes were more inte...more

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G. J. Meyer is a former Woodrow Wilson Fellow with an M.A. in English literature from the University of Minnesota, a onetime journalist, and holder of Harvard University’s Neiman Fellowship in Journalism. He has taught at colleges and universities in Des Moines, St. Louis, and New York. His books include A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, Executive Blues, and The Memphis Murders, winner o...more

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“People everywhere were being told that this war was no continuation of politics by other means, no traditional struggle for limited objectives. It was a fight to the death with the forces of evil, and the stakes were survival and civilization itself. It is no simple thing to make people believe such things and later persuade them to accept a settlement based on compromise.” — 3 likes

“There arose in the aftermath of this battle the strangest and most beautiful legend of the war. It was said that, when the British peril was at its height, a majestic figure had appeared high in the sky with arm upraised. Some said it had been pointing to victory, others that it held back the Germans as the Tommies got away. It came to be known as the Angel of Mons. Even more colorful was the simultaneous legend of the Archers of Agincourt. In the late Middle Ages at Agincourt—not a great distance from Mons—English yeomen armed with longbows had won a great victory over a much bigger force of mounted and armored French knights. Four hundred and ninety-nine years later there were stories of German soldiers found dead at Mons with arrows through their bodies.” — 2 likes

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