The Great War

Les Carlyon's The Great War is the epic story of the fighting men who wove themselves into legend as part of the largest tragedy in Australian history - 179,000 dead and wounded - leaving a nation to mourn its fallen heroes in 'one long national funeral' into the 1930s and, now again, a century later. As he did with the best-seller Gallipoli, Carlyon leads the reader behind the lines, across the western front and other theatres of battle, and deep into the minds of the men who are witnesses to war.

Having walked the fields of France, Belgium and Turkey on his quest for a truth beyond the myth, Carlyon weaves us a mesmerising narrative that shifts seamlessly from the hatching of grand strategies in the political salons of London and St Petersburg to the muddy, bloody trenches of Pozieres and Passchendaele where ordinary soldiers descended into a maelstrom unimaginable. The Great War is history at its best - a brilliant account of the most vital event in Australian history.