A World Undone

Drawing on exhaustive research, this remarkable, intimate account tells the story of how World War I reduced Europe's mightiest empires to rubble, killed twenty million people, and cracked the foundations of the world we live in today.On a summer day in 1914, a nineteen-year-old Serbian nationalist gunned down Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. While the world slumbered, monumental forces were shaken. In less than a month, a combination of ambition, deceit, fear, jealousy, missed opportunities, and miscalculation sent Austro-Hungarian troops marching into Serbia, German troops streaming toward Paris, and a vast Russian army into war, with England as its ally. As crowds cheered their armies on, no one could guess what lay ahead: four long years of slaughter, physical and moral exhaustion, and the near collapse of a civilization that until 1914 had dominated the globe.Praise for A World Undone"Thundering, magnificent . . . [A World...