Antoine Prost is Professor Emeritus of History, University of Paris Panthon-Sorbonne. Translated from the French by Helen McPhail

'It has to be good news that Prost's exemplary study can now be appreciated by a new generation of monoglot readers.'History'Prost's conclusions are persuasively argued, and historians of the verteran experience elsewhere would do well to take his book as a yardstick against which to measure their own work.'Canadian Military History