Who were the shell shocked soldiers of the First World War? How did the warfare they experienced, the military discipline they often endured, the medical treatment they encountered shape their post-war lives? Peter Leese's Shell Shock, now published for the first time in paperback, narrates their stories to demonstrate the wider implications of shell shock. In its origins, shell shock in the Great War tells us about the new industrial technologies and mentalities of modernity. In its after-life, shell shock helps us understand the histories of violence, trauma and memory through the twentieth and into the twenty-first century.