The Sleepwalkers

The pacy, sensitive and formidably argued history of the causes of the First World War, from acclaimed historian and author Christopher Clark

FINANCIAL TIMES BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2014
SUNDAY TIMES and INDEPENDENT BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2012
Winner of the Los Angeles Times History Book Prize 2014

The moments that it took Gavrilo Princip to step forward to the stalled car and shoot dead Franz Ferdinand and his wife were perhaps the most fateful of the modern era. An act of terrorism of staggering efficiency, it fulfilled its every aim: it would liberate Bosnia from Habsburg rule and it created a powerful new Serbia, but it also brought down four great empires, killed millions of men and destroyed a civilization. What made a seemingly prosperous and complacent Europe so vulnerable to the impact of this assassination?

In The Sleepwalkers Christopher Clark retells the story of the outbreak of the First World War