Seldom do I read books which feel like real page-turners, but I've just finished a great exception to that: Adam Hochschild's To End All Wars: How the First World War Divided Britain. 
It's a thoroughly engaging journey from pre-1914 to post-1918 through the lives of some of the most influential figures involved in the conflict, mostly on the British / Allied side but including Russians, Germans, Austrians too. The beauty of the book is in the way it combines the struggles of those in the trenches with those imprisoned facing firing squads for their conscientious objection; the way it demonstrates the remarkable strength of the anti-war movement in Britain and (towards the end of the conflict especially) in Russia and Germany; and the way that it shows how the war radically divided families. Among these were the Pankhursts, who broke off their suffragette campaigns, two to become leading advocates of the war, two to publicly oppose it, and Field Marshal John French, 1st Earl of Ypres, and his campaigning pacifist sister suffragist, Sinn Féin activist sister Charlotte Despard. A great book to read for right now.
