Verdun was the battle which lasted ten months in which at least 700,000 men fell along a front of fifteen miles. The aim was less to defeat the enemy than to bleed him to death. Verdun's once fertile terrain is even now the "nearest thing to desert in Europe". The book is not only a chronicle of the facts of death, it is a study of the men who fought there, and one that shows Verdun to be the key to an understanding of World War I. It also investigates the minds of those who waged it, the traditions that bound them, and the world that gave them the opportunity.