The acclaimed British historian offers a majestic, single-volume work
incorporating all major fronts-domestic, diplomatic, military-for "a
stunning achievement of research and storytelling" (Publishers
Weekly)
It was to be the war to end all wars, and it began at 11:15 on the
morning of June 28, 1914, in an outpost of the Austro-Hungarian Empire
called Sarajevo. It would end officially almost five years later.
Unofficially, it has never ended: the horrors we live with today were
born in the First World War.
It left millions-civilians and soldiers-maimed or dead. And it left us
with new technologies of death: tanks, planes, and submarines; reliable
rapid-fire machine guns and field artillery; poison gas and chemical
warfare. It introduced us to U-boat packs and strategic bombing, to
unrestricted war on civilians and mistreatment of prisoners. Most of
all, it changed our world. In its wake, empires toppled, monarchies
fell, whole populations lost their national identities as political
systems, and geographic boundaries were realigned. Instabilities were
institutionalized, enmities enshrined. And the social order shifted
seismically. Manners, mores, codes of behavior; literature and the arts;
education and class distinctions-all underwent a vast sea change. And in
all these ways, the twentieth century can be said to have been born on
the morning of June 28, 1914.
"One of the first books that anyone should read in beginning to try to
understand this war and this century."
-The New York Times Book Review (cover)
