To mark the 100th anniversary of the launch of the Great War, The Atlantic has published a special commemorative edition featuring dispatches from soldiers at the front and articles by such major writers and historical figures as Winston Churchill, H.G. Wells, Gertrude Stein, W.E.B. Du Bois, H.L. Mencken, Walter Lippmann, Reinhold Niebuhr, Bertrand Russell, Arnold J. Toynbee, Barbara Tuchmann, Christopher Hitchens, and many others, all drawn from the magazine's archives. Experience history as Atlantic writers and readers experienced it at the time, watching the slow build-up to war and then its sudden rippling explosions as combat broke out; the brutal, violent--and sometimes darkly humorous--reality of life in the trenches; the savage peace that followed war, along with the failed attempts at a League of Nations, the rise of Hitler, and the rumblings of the next World War.

A richly packed 144 pages of war reportage, vivid photography, and poetry, the issue also includes:

• The New York Times foreign affairs columnist Roger Cohen explaining why it's all too easy to imagine a third world war breaking out today. (This article is available as a sample of the issue, along with James Bennet's editor's note and these letters sent home to his parents by a US Soldier stationed in France.)
• The nationally bestselling author Richard Rubin on America's decisive role in the war--and its strangely distant relationship to the war today
• The Yale historian Jay Winter on how the war made the world we live in today by redrawing geopolitical boundaries, advancing the technology of killing, and changing the meaning of war.
• A photo essay showing the scarred battlefields of Europe--during the war and today.
• An illustrated timeline of the war
• A 1908 interview with Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II
• Multiple dispatches from the front that capture the tragedy and banality--and, rarely, the nobility--of the war as experienced by soldiers at the time

You can read this issue in digital format by downloading it for your iPad or iPhone, Android, or Kindle. You can order a print version here, or buy a copy at any newsstand.