First World War (WWI)

The carnage one hundred years ago on the Somme was appalling. And because of Haig’s excessive strategic ambition, it was inefficiently appalling. But that didn’t make it futile.

Helprin’s A Soldier of the Great War leaves the big battles to history books to focus on the eddies swirling in wartime and the people caught in them.

While showing how a war between the U.S. and China would play out, P.W. Singer and August Cole’s Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War is a highly-recommendable read that has already helped focus minds on this topic, both inside the Beltway and beyond.