The definitive books on the battles of the 20th century. BY VICTOR DAVIS HANSON Saturday, March 25, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST 1. "The Price of Glory" by Alistair Horne (St. Martin's, 1963). Over the course of 10 months in 1916, the French and Germans killed or wounded about 1.25 million of their best soldiers in a few wooded acres around a fortress complex near the French town of Verdun on the Western Front. Alistair Horne graphically describes the sheer physics of the human carnage, yet the battle was not entirely madness: The Germans had a diabolical plan to bleed the...