The Best War and History Books of All Time

This is one of the 759 lists we use to generate our main The Greatest Books list.

About this list

The Telegraph selects the best war and history books ever written

This list was originally published in 2014 and was added to this site over 1 year ago.

Rank	Book	Authors	Year	Country	Language
596	The History of the Peloponnesian War	Thucydides	-410	Greek	Ancient greek
14721	The History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire Volume Ii	Edward Gibbon	1781	British	English
67	A Farewell to Arms	Ernest Hemingway	1929	American	English
2249	1066 And All That	W. C. Sellar	1930	British	English
86	All Quiet on the Western Front	Erich Maria Remarque	1928	German	German
14788	Legion Of The Damned	Sven Hassel	1953	Danish	Danish
14132	A History of the English-Speaking Peoples	Winston Churchill	1956	British	English
12104	Sword Of Honour	Evelyn Waugh	1965	British	English
14132	A History of the Crusades	Stephen Runciman	1951	British	English
14788	The Making Of The Middle Ages	R. W. Southern	1953	British	English
33	Catch-22	Joseph Heller	1961	American	English
1588	The Guns of August	Barbara Wertheim Tuchman	1962	American	English
84	Slaughterhouse-Five	Kurt Vonnegut	1969	American	English
558	Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee	Dee Alexander Brown	1970	American	English
2391	The Face of Battle	John Keegan	1976	British	English
3067	Montaillou	Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie	1975	French	French
4417	A Bright Shining Lie	Neil Sheehan	1988	American	English
14232	Ordinary Men	Christopher R. Browning	1992	American	English
5381	Longitude	Dava Sobel	1995	American	English
14985	The Discovery Of France	Graham Robb	2007	British	English
1834	Histories	Cornelius Tacitus	100	Roman	Latin
159	The Good Soldier Švejk	Jaroslav Hašek	1921	Czech	Czech
413	The Naked and the Dead	Norman Mailer	1948	American	English
652	Dispatches	Michael Herr	1977	American	English
1070	Birdsong	Sebastian Faulks	1993	British	English
1935	Corelli's Mandolin	Louis de Bernières	1994	British	English
849	Regeneration	Pat Barker	1991	British	English
14985	Europe	Norman Davies	1996	British	English
1384	Guns, Germs, and Steel	Jared Diamond	1997	American	English
13941	The Siege	Helen Dunmore	2001	British	English
8972	A Short History Of Nearly Everything	Bill Bryson	2003	American	English
14985	Hitler	Ian Kershaw	1998	British	English
14985	The Battle For Spain	Antony Beevor	2006	British	English
14985	Ornamentalism	David Cannadine	2001	British	English
6277	Citizens	Simon Schama	1989	British	English