The Somme: Heroism and Horror in the First World War

"Gilbert has unearthed fascinating details of the campaign . . . An unforgettable read."―The Philadelphia Inquirer

At 7:30 a.m. on July 1, 1916, the first Allied soldiers climbed out of their trenches along the Somme River in France and charged into no-man's-land, toward the barbed wire and machine guns at the German front lines. In the months that followed, the fifteen-mile-long territory erupted into the epicenter of the Great War, marking a pivotal moment in both the war and military history as tanks first appeared on the battlefield and air war emerged as a devastating and decisive factor in battle. All told, there were more than one million casualties, with 310,000 men dead in just 138 days.

In this vivid account of one of history's most destructive battles, distinguished historian Martin Gilbert tracks the experiences of foot soldiers, generals, and everyone in between. With new photographs, journal entries, original maps, and military planning documents, The Somme is the most authoritative and affecting account of this bloody turning point in the Great War.

Sir Martin Gilbert (1936-2015) was Winston Churchill's official biographer and a leading historian of the modern world. He was an Honorary Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, and a Distinguished Fellow of Hillsdale College, Michigan.

He was the author of more than eighty books, among them the single-volume Churchill: A Life, his twin histories First World War and Second World War, a comprehensive History of Israel, and his three-volume work, A History of the Twentieth Century. His book The Holocaust: The Jewish Tragedy (published in the United States as The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War) is a classic work on the subject.