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Betrayal at Little Gibraltar: A German Fortress, a Treacherous American General, and the Battle to End World War I

The attack on the Montfaucon fortified position on 26-27 September 1918 resulted in thousands of casualties to the 79th Division. In With Their Bare Hands there is a one-page explanation of the roots of the controversy. Here an entire book examines this event and lays out a more sinister reason: a deliberate “betrayal” by III […]

Walking the Western Front: The Somme 1916, The First of July

This book is a companion to the BBC DVD series Walking the Western Front. It includes 150 prints in color and black and white taken during multiple filming trips to the Somme. Historical photos taken 100 years ago are accompanied by shots in the exact same spot today. Many of the modern photos are beautiful, […]

Ancestor’s Footsteps: The Somme 1916

The publisher explains that the purpose of this book is to answer “questions asked by visitors to the Somme; where did my ancestor fight?” It uses battle accounts with modern notations on historical trench maps, intended to help the reader locate individual units. The index has an impressive list of military units, but it may […]

A Visitor’s Guide – The First Day of the Somme: Gommecourt to Maricourt

This guidebook uses a different approach from the previous one above that covers Ypres, and it is much less effective and rather old fashioned. There are no color maps or color photos and the book is not as well organized. For example, the modern map of Serre shows twelve numbered locations, but these appear over […]

Understanding the Ypres Salient: An Illuminating Battlefield Guide

This is a well-organized and lavishly illustrated guidebook that identifies dozens of key locations around the town of Ypres in Belgium. Three major battles were fought there, in 1914, 1915, and 1917, resulting in massive casualties but moving the frontline at most a few miles. There are dozens of color historical maps and color modern […]

Zeppelins Over the Midlands

The author’s approach is to make the single massive nine-airship raid of 31 January 1916 the center of a broader history by following the crews, their airships, and the targeted cities and towns through the war and beyond. The author’s grandmother and mother narrowly survived this raid, prompting Powis to devote years of research to […]

Vintage Aviation Series

Casemate is republishing a number of classic pilot autobiographies and histories from World War One. These include works by James McCudden, Charles Biddle, Rudolf Stark, L.A. Strange, and others. Most of these books were originally published in the 1930s and several times since, but are now out of print. While these reasonably priced hardcover books […]

The Unsubstantial Air: American Fliers in the First World War

My initial impression of this book by its cover, was pretty skeptical. Was it one more book about famous aces, rehashing the stories that have been told many times before? Was it one of the flood of books written quickly to cash in on the WW1 centennial? After reading just a couple dozen pages, however, […]

The First Blitz: Bombing London in the First World War

Ian Castle tells the story of the Zeppelin, Gotha, and Giant air raids on London in WW1. It is one of the best overviews in print, devoting a fair amount of attention to the raids’ effects on the populace but also covering well all the other aspects of the topic. The maps are beautiful and […]

Oswald Boelcke: Germany’s First Fighter Ace and Father of Air Combat

Head’s distinguished U.S. Air Force career involved flying several combat aircraft and several assignments in Vietnam. His work on Boelcke reflects Head’s insights on how aerial combat assumed a definitive role thanks to Boelcke’s leadership and legacy. The book is a leisure read, covering aviators, the physical flying environment, and the rewards associated with combat […]

One in a Thousand: The Life and Death of Captain Eddie McKay, Royal Flying Corps

Tim Cook, a historian at the Canadian War Museum, wrote that this “well-written and deeply researched microhistory offers a detailed biography of one of Canada’s most important fighter pilots from the Great War.” Captain Eddie McKay flew with No. 24 Squadron and fought over the Somme offensive from July-October 1916, and survived “Bloody April” in […]

The Last Flight of the L31 and L32

Ray Rimell’s two books on Zeppelins include an astounding wealth of new information and photographs. These two Zeppelins were shot down a week apart over England in 1916 and ended the lives of two of the Germany Navy’s most capable airship commanders, Heinrich Mathy and Werner Petersen. The two slim monographs discuss […]

Grim Reapers: French Escadrille 94 in World War I

This is an exceptional squadron history. It is based on interviews with several pilots that were conducted as far back as the 1970s. Guttman provides insightful, well-written context on the pilots, their aircraft, markings, their adversaries, and daily squadron life. Escadrille N.94 was created in May 1917, started by flying Nieuport 24s and later transitioned […]

The Great War’s Finest: An Operational History of the German Air Service, Volume I: Western Front 1914

The Over the Front review of this extraordinary new study described it as a “large-format volume with personal accounts and large-size color and black & white photos, as well as many clear charts [also in color] and multi-color maps. The latter are important to understanding the scope and sweep of the ground war, which aviators […]

Eyes All Over the Sky: Aerial Reconnaissance in the First World War

This is not only a good book, it’s an important book. Streckfuss argues convincingly that the least-studied segment of WW1 aviation, aerial reconnaissance, was also the most important. The landplanes, seaplanes, and captive balloons devoted to observation turned artillery into a dominant force on the battlefield by extending its range and accuracy to an extent […]

Billy Bishop VC Lone Wolf Hunter: The RAF Ace Re-Examined

Peter Kilduff is recognized as an authority on WW1 aviation and the Red Baron (Manfred von Richthofen) in particular. As an expert on German records, Kilduff describes what the German records say and don’t say regarding each of Bishop’s 72 aerial victories. The German aviation records are incomplete due to WW2 aerial bombing, others were […]

Bill Lambert: World War I Flying Ace

American born Lambert apparently went to Canada in late 1915 and tried to enlist, but instead became a chemist making explosives in a factory. Before the U.S. declared war, Lambert sought to join the British Royal Flying Corps that was recruiting in Toronto. He was accepted in June 1917 and received only four rather than […]

Soldiers’ Songs and Slang of the Great War

Featured Review Soldiers’ Song and Slang of the Great War is an update and enlargement of a book first published in 1931. The current book includes phrases that were deemed inappropriate in earlier editions. The slang is both mystifying and well known. For example, a “goo wallah” is the sanitary man. Other items such as […]

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