More about Hart's book.
He is on my list.

"The historiography of the Great War has changed dramatically in recent times. Serious students have long since abandoned the Lions Led By Donkeys approach to the war and academics like the late Paddy Griffith and Professor Gary Sheffield have championed the formal approach to our understanding of how the conflict was really fought. But in many respects this new thinking has hardly left the lecture room. Working as a battlefield guide with thousands of members of the public one does not have to be a mind reader to know where the majority of those who start the tour stand when it comes to the command and conduct of battles like the Somme: slaughter, butchers, tin-pot generals are all common phrases. After a few days of looking at the ground, hearing the problems of command with little control, seeing how the conflict was ever evolving and how much training went into the later battles, most returned changed, and not a little challenged on many levels. That is what the First World War has long needed in print – the whole war in a broad brush stroke but with no attempt to dilute. And perhaps Peter Hart's book is it."

"As we move into the unknown territory of the Great War Centenary we need books like Hart's. We need to know that the war was a conflict the veterans were not ashamed of, we need to know where it's commanders sit in the wider picture but equally we need to understand what a catastrophe it was: to his credit, unlike some revisionist historians, Peter Hart does not exclude the human element."
http://ww1centenary.net/2013/04/02/ww1-books-the-great-war-by-peter-hart/