Bloody Victory: The Sacrifice on the Somme and the Making of the Twentieth Centuryby William Philpott
The Somme, for the British, has become a “metaphor for futility and slaughter”, a tragedy that defies understanding, and to recover some of the reality of what happened on the western front in 1916 is no easy task. Philpott argues that nearly everything we think we know about the Somme (the pointless waste of lives sacrificed for a few hundred yards of muddy terrain, the idiocy of the high command) is either wrong or a misinterpretation of events imposed by later commentators. Looking beyond the appalling losses of the first day, he puts the battle in the wider context of the war of brutal attrition that the allied generals were obliged to fight. After reading this ambitious narrative, it becomes impossible to see the Somme as a futile engagement in a futile conflict (Little, Brown £25 pp722)

1938: Hitler's Gamble by Giles MacDonogh
1938 was a turning point in the history of Germany and of the world. It was the year that Hitler forced through the Anschluss with Austria and bullied the British and the French into allowing him control of the Sudetenland. It was the year in which Nazi persecution of the Jews escalated dramatically, culminating in the brutality of Kristallnacht. In hindsight, it was the year that Europe moved inevitably towards war. MacDonogh’s narrative of the events of 1938 makes compelling but painful reading. The month-by-month format he has adopted emphasises the improvisation that was at the heart of Hitler’s strategy, and highlights more cruelly the opportunities that were lost, even a year before the start of the war, to call his bluff and thrust events onto a different path. “What if?” remains the most tantalising of historical questions, but this absorbing book obliges us to ask it (Constable £20 pp416)

Men of War: Courage Under Fire in the 19th-Century Navy by David Crane
Crane’s elegantly written, multiple biography rescues three men from obscurity. Frank Hastings served as a midshipman at Trafalgar, was later dismissed from the Royal Navy for challenging a superior officer to a duel, then redeemed himself by becoming a hero in the Greek war of independence. William Peel, son of the prime minister, won the Victoria Cross during the Crimean war and died in India, a martyr to the demands of empire, the year after the Mutiny. James Goodenough, an outstanding officer of a later generation, also sacrificed his life to imperial duty when he was killed by natives on a remote Pacific beach. Each life makes entertaining reading, but the implicit assumption that, taken together, they provide an overview of the 19th-century navy seems a shaky one (HarperPress £30 pp484)

Times Recommends

• Superfreakonomics by Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner
• The Times picks the 50 best paperbacks of 2009
• Vincent van Gogh’s letters show the soul of the artist