Rites of Spring

So, a good question for a History grad student might be: "What's a good history book that I might like?"
Here's a great history book: Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age by Modris Eksteins. Eksteins tries to chart the ways that the First World War changed the mentalities of Europeans, so much so in fact that many of the mentalities that we consider to be "contemporary" or "post-modern" originated, in fact, with the terrors of the trenches. The book is stunning because Eksteins weaves in so many varied sources, accounts, and events that the reader can see patterns of behavior emerge in the 1920s that are all-but-forgotten today, even though they still relate to our current world. Fascinating.