Verdun is one of the best-served battlefields in print. A few to read before you visit:
- Alistair Horne, The Price of Glory (1962) — still the standard English-language history of the battle. Lyrical, exhaustive, sympathetic to soldiers on both sides.
- Paul Jankowski, Verdun: The Longest Battle of the Great War (2014) — a more recent academic synthesis using French and German archives. Strong on logistics, less on individual experience.
- Henri Barbusse, Le Feu (1916) — not specifically about Verdun but the great French novel of the trenches, written by a serving infantryman. Won the Prix Goncourt.
- Maurice Genevoix, Ceux de 14 (republished as a single volume in 1949) — five-volume eyewitness memoir by a young French officer; Genevoix was wounded at the start of the war and his account of his platoon is the most affecting French soldier memoir of the conflict.
- John Mosier, Verdun (2013) — controversial revisionist account; useful as a counter-weight to the standard narrative.