The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914

On the morning of 6/28/1914, when Archduke Franz Ferdinand & his wife, Sophie Chotek, arrived at Sarajevo railway station, Europe was at peace. 37 days later, it was at war. The conflict that resulted would kill more than 15,000,000, destroy three empires & permanently alter world history. The Sleepwalkers details how the crisis leading to WWI unfolded. Drawing on fresh sources, it traces the paths to war in a minute-by-minute, action-packed narrative that cuts among the key decision centers in Vienna, Berlin, St Petersburg, Paris, London & Belgrade. Christopher Clark examines the decades of history that informed the events of 1914 & details the mutual misunderstandings & unintended signals that drove the crisis forward in a few short weeks. How did the Balkans—a peripheral region far from Europe's centers of power & wealth—come to be the center of a drama of such magnitude? How had European nations organized themselves into opposing alliances & how did these nations manage to carry out foreign policy as a result? Clark reveals a Europe racked by chronic problems—a fractured world of instability & militancy that was, fatefully, saddled with a conspicuously ineffectual set of political leaders. These rulers, who prided themselves on their modernity & rationalism, stumbled thru crisis after crisis & finally convinced themselves that war was the only answer. Meticulously researched, The Sleepwalkers is a magisterial account of one of the most compelling dramas of modern times.