JOAN Beaumont's Broken Nation is on many levels a scholarly book - well researched, intelligently written and endorsed by footnotes and supporting maps.

But the dedication at the beginning of the hardback gives some hint of the personal motivation behind the work: "For my father, a child in World War I, who, as a man, believed that no one should be forced to kill."

Broken Nation By Joan Beaumont Allen & Unwin rrp $55

Broken Nation is not an anti-war polemic by any stretch, but Beaumont is aware of not further inflating the mythic image that surrounds Anzac.

She wants the war remembered as the soldiers - and the loved ones at home - experienced it.

As she points out, the war was about "more than fighting and killing", and while most books tackling World War I tend to focus on the battles and the military strategy at the expense of the homefront experience, Beaumont aims for a comprehensive survey.

There is analysis of the Gallipoli landing, the various battles including Fromelles, and the German offensives, alongside stories of the Australian homefront - a term coined during World War I in acknowledgment of the importance of the wartime populace.

"Even when soldiers did keep silent, trying to reassure their already anxious families, the enormous casualty lists brought catastrophe into numerous homes and families," Beaumont writes.

There is also significant detail on the Spanish influenza that followed the troops home, who, having survived the Great War, found they faced yet another potentially fatal threat. In 1918 - the year that hostilities ceased - the influenza pandemic killed another 12,000 to 15,000 troops.

Broken Nation is a crucial book not just for the breadth of historical information it carries, but because it offers context and scope for reflection.

Indeed, our modern comforts and social harmony seem luxurious compared with what our forebears endured.