What I liked best about this book wasn't that it gave me a view of history from a time nearly 100 years ago (rather the reason I started it) but instead that it covered the causes of the war and the effects of the war. The answers to "Could this have been avoided?" and "How did it change the world?" even more that the events themselves became important to me during this book. I think he does a good job of explaining not just the current historical interpretation of the First World War, but how the ideas of it changed over the last 100 years. I really liked the sections on the war poets and the influence of the war on the arts.
I listened to the Modern Scholar cd course. Is there a book and is this different than the text? A good basic introduction to WWI. It is heavy on the Allied point of view, and especially the British. Other theaters are discussed, but the emphasis is on the ground war in Europe. It it enough to give you a taste, but for a more comprehensive approach you will have to search elsewhere.