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    The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914

    3.9 18

    by Christopher Clark


    Paperback

    (Reprint)

    $18.99
    $18.99

    Customer Reviews

    • ISBN-13: 9780061146664
    • Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
    • Publication date: 03/18/2014
    • Edition description: Reprint
    • Pages: 736
    • Sales rank: 33,193
    • Product dimensions: 5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.17(d)
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    On the morning of June 28, 1914, when Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie Chotek, arrived at Sarajevo railway station, Europe was at peace. Thirty-seven days later, it was at war. The conflict that resulted would kill more than fifteen million people, destroy three empires, and permanently alter world history.

    The Sleepwalkers reveals in gripping detail how the crisis leading to World War I 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, and Belgrade. Distinguished historian Christopher Clark examines the decades of history that informed the events of 1914 and details the mutual misunderstandings and 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 and wealth—come to be the center of a drama of such magnitude? How had European nations organized themselves into opposing alliances, and 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 and militancy that was, fatefully, saddled with a conspicuously ineffectual set of political leaders. These rulers, who prided themselves on their modernity and rationalism, stumbled through crisis after crisis and finally convinced themselves that war was the only answer.

    Meticulously researched and masterfully written, The Sleepwalkers is a magisterial account of one of the most compelling dramas of modern times.

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    Niall Ferguson
    The most readable account of the origins of the First World War since Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August. The difference is that The Sleepwalkers is a lovingly researched work of the highest scholarship.
    Max Hastings
    An important book. . . . One of the most impressive and stimulating studies of the period ever published.
    Foreign Affairs
    This compelling examination of the causes of World War I deserves to become the new standard one-volume account of that contentious subject.
    The Wall Street Journal
    Clark is a masterly historian. . . . His account vividly reconstructs key decision points while deftly sketching the context driving them. . . . A magisterial work.
    The Boston Globe
    A monumental new volume. . . . Revelatory, even revolutionary. . . . Clark has done a masterful job explaining the inexplicable.
    Ian Kershaw
    Excellent. . . . The book is stylishly written as well as superb scholarship. No analysis of the origins of the First World War will henceforth be able to bypass this magisterial work.
    The Washington Post
    Easily the best book ever written on the subject. . . . A work of rare beauty that combines meticulous research with sensitive analysis and elegant prose. The enormous weight of its quality inspires amazement and awe. . . . Academics should take note: Good history can still be a good story.
    MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History
    A meticulously researched, superbly organized, and handsomely written account.
    Fareed Zakaria
    Superb. . . . One of the great mysteries of history is how Europe’s great powers could have stumbled into World War I. . . . This is the single best book I have read on this important topic.
    Harold Evans
    A thoroughly comprehensive and highly readable account. . . . The brilliance of Clark’s far-reaching history is that we are able to discern how the past was genuinely prologue. . . . In conception, steely scholarship and piercing insights, his book is a masterpiece.
    The Daily Beast
    As spacious and convincing a treatment as has yet appeared. . . . Clark’s prose is clear and laced with color.
    Slate
    A great book. . . An amazing narrative history of the crisis and the larger context.
    The Guardian
    A superb account of the causes of the first world war. . . . Clark brilliantly puts this illogical conflict into context.
    The Independent
    This book is as authoritative as it is gripping. . . . Clark provides a vivid panorama of the jostling among Europe’s policymakers. . . . The reader is rapt as ‘watchful but unseeing’ protagonists head for inconceivable horror.
    The Economist
    Excellent. . . . Where Clark excels is in explaining how the pre-war diplomatic maneuvers resembled a giant exercise in game theory.”-
    Thomas Laqueur
    Clark’s narrative sophistication, his philosophical awareness, and his almost preternatural command of his sources make The Sleepwalkers an exemplary instance of how to navigate this tricky terrain. The best book on the origins of the First World War that I know.
    Matthew Yglesias
    One of 2013’s finest nonfiction books. . . . Offers more up-to-date scholarship than you’ll find in a classic like Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August.

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