A book long and dense…

…called “one of the finest works of history written.... a splendid and glittering performance” by the New York Times when it was first published in 1962, Barbara Tuchman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning telling of the origins and first 30 days of World War I, The Guns of August begins…

So gorgeous was the spectacle on the May morning of 1910 when nine kings rode in the funeral of Edward VII of England that the crowd, waiting in hushed and black-clad awe, could not keep back gasps of admiration.

…and ends (some 640 pages later)…

The nations were caught in a trap, a trap made during the first thirty days out of battles that failed to be decisive, a trap from which there was, and has been, no exit.

Tuchman records in a footnote, "When the war was over, the known dead per capita of population were 1 to 28 for France, 1 to 32 for Germany, 1 to 57 for England and 1 to 107 for Russia."

A pile of books have been published about “the war to end all wars,” and more will come this year, the 100th anniversary of its beginning, but if you want to read just one, read this. It’s on the list.