When I saw the title of this volume, I expected one of those encyclopedias in which texts by historians are interspersed with grainy images that bring the arguments to life. “The Great War” could not be more different. The images presented here are not illustrations for a narrative; they are the narrative. Hilary Roberts, the head curator of photography at the Imperial War Museums in Britain (home of the world’s most extensive collection of World War I photographs), provided the historical and contextual expertise. Mark Holborn is a celebrated editor of illustrated books and a master of photographic mise-en-scène. The result of their collaboration is a book of extraordinary power and clarity.

It opens with a photograph of a quick-firing 13-pounder gun that remained in action for the entire duration of the war. At 9:30 a.m. on Aug. 22, 1914, it became the first British gun to open fire. In November 1918, it was one of the last guns to fall silent, by which time it had moved only a few miles from its original position. What written text could better convey than this blunt object the inertia of the slaughter on the Western Front?

The images that follow are like scenes from a silent film. A sea of raised hats in front of the Berliner Schloss welcomes Germany’s declaration of war on Russia on Aug. 1, 1914; on the opposite page, we see a similar sea of similar hats, raised to hail King George V on the balcony of Buckingham Palace after the British declaration of war on Germany three days later. Czech soldiers chat with elegantly dressed women in front of a beautiful gate in Prague; well-dressed men and women gather around an open newspaper on a street in central Budapest. Both pictures were taken on July 30, 1914. We are on a threshold: Women will henceforth vanish from the scene, to reappear much later as nurses, munitions workers and ambulance drivers.