This is a two volume work. Volume 1 is "Before Sarajevo - Underlying Causes of the War." Volume 2 is "After Sarajevo - Immediate Causes of the War." By "Before Sarajevo," it is meant before the assassination in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914 of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary. This volume two starts with the Serbian Plot to Assassinate the Archduke and continues to the mobilizations in France and Germany on August 1, 1914. Unlike some other authors, Sidney Fay believes that the assassination of the Archduke was part of the plot by the Black Hand. Others, however, state that the assassination was a coincidence caused by a wrong turn by a driver and that there is no proof that the assassin was part of the Black Hand. This book deals with the incredible series of events in which in only 37 days after the assassination of the Archduke and his wife Sophie, Germany invaded both Belgium and France. These events have ever since been studied by career diplomats, seeking to learn the reasons for this so as to try to prevent another pointless war like this one from happening.

Winner of the Norman B. Tomlinson, Jr. Prize “The best large-scale synthesis in any language of what we currently know and understand about this multidimensional, cataclysmic conflict.” —Richard J. Evans, Times Literary Supplement In this monumental history of the First World War, Germany’s leading historian of the period offers a dramatic account of its origins, course, and consequences. Jörn Leonhard treats the clash of arms with a sure feel for grand strategy. He captures the slow attrition, the race for ever more destructive technologies, and the grim experiences of frontline soldiers. But the war was more than a military conflict and he also gives us the perspectives of leaders, intellectuals, artists, and ordinary men and women around the world as they grappled with the urgency of the moment and the rise of unprecedented political and social pressures. With an unrivaled combination of depth and global reach, Pandora’s Box reveals how profoundly the war shaped the world to come. “[An] epic and magnificent work—unquestionably, for me, the best single-volume history of the war I have ever read...It is the most formidable attempt to make the war to end all wars comprehensible as a whole.” —Simon Heffer, The Spectator “[A] great book on the Great War...Leonhard succeeds in being comprehensive without falling prey to the temptation of being encyclopedic. He writes fluently and judiciously.” —Adam Tooze, Die Zeit “Extremely readable, lucidly structured, focused, and dynamic...Leonhard’s analysis is enlivened by a sharp eye for concrete situations and an ear for the voices that best convey the meaning of change for the people and societies undergoing it.” —Christopher Clark, author of The Sleepwalkers

“A monumental new volume. . . . Revelatory, even revolutionary. . . . Clark has done a masterful job explaining the inexplicable.” — Boston Globe One of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of the Year • Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (History) Historian Christopher Clark’s riveting account of the explosive beginnings of World War I. Drawing on new scholarship, Clark offers a fresh look at World War I, focusing not on the battles and atrocities of the war itself, but on the complex events and relationships that led a group of well-meaning leaders into brutal conflict. Clark traces the paths to war in a minute-by-minute, action-packed narrative that cuts between the key decision centers in Vienna, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Paris, London, and Belgrade, and 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. Meticulously researched and masterfully written, The Sleepwalkers is a dramatic and authoritative chronicle of Europe’s descent into a war that tore the world apart.

I. Before Sarajevo: underlying causes of the war.--II. After Sarajevo: immediate causes of the war.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Drawing on exhaustive research, this intimate account details how World War I reduced Europe’s mightiest empires to rubble, killed twenty million people, and cracked the foundations of our modern world “Thundering, magnificent . . . [A World Undone] is a book of true greatness that prompts moments of sheer joy and pleasure. . . . It will earn generations of admirers.”—The Washington Times 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 in the First World War: 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 “Meyer’s sketches of the British Cabinet, the Russian Empire, the aging Austro-Hungarian Empire . . . are lifelike and plausible. His account of the tragic folly of Gallipoli is masterful. . . . [A World Undone] has an instructive value that can scarcely be measured”—Los Angeles Times “An original and very readable account of one of the most significant and often misunderstood events of the last century.”—Steve Gillon, resident historian, The History Channel

The First World War has been described as the "primordial catastrophe of the twentieth century." Arguably, Italian Fascism, German National Socialism and Soviet Leninism and Stalinism would not have emerged without the cultural and political shock of World War I. The question why this catastrophe happened therefore preoccupies historians to this day. The focus of this volume is not on the consequences, but rather on the connection between the Great War and the long 19th century, the short- and long-term causes of World War I. This approach results in the questioning of many received ideas about the war's causes, especially the notion of "inevitability."

When war broke out in Europe in 1914, it surprised a European population enjoying the most beautiful summer in memory. For nearly a century since, historians have debated the causes of the war. Some have cited the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand; others have concluded it was unavoidable. In Europe’s Last Summer, David Fromkin provides a different answer: hostilities were commenced deliberately. In a riveting re-creation of the run-up to war, Fromkin shows how German generals, seeing war as inevitable, manipulated events to precipitate a conflict waged on their own terms. Moving deftly between diplomats, generals, and rulers across Europe, he makes the complex diplomatic negotiations accessible and immediate. Examining the actions of individuals amid larger historical forces, this is a gripping historical narrative and a dramatic reassessment of a key moment in the twentieth-century.

Shortly after the book’s protagonists moved into their apartment complex in Sarajevo, they, like many others, were overcome by the 1992-1995 war and the disintegration of socialist Yugoslavia More than a decade later, in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina, they felt they were collectively stuck in a time warp where nothing seemed to be as it should be. Starting from everyday concerns, this book paints a compassionate yet critical portrait of people’s sense that they were in limbo, trapped in a seemingly endless “Meantime.” Ethnographically investigating yearnings for “normal lives” in the European semi-periphery, it proposes fresh analytical tools to explore how the time and place in which we are caught shape our hopes and fears.

The Twentieth Century in European Memory investigates contested and divisive memories of conflicts, world wars, dictatorship, genocide and mass killing. Focusing on the questions of transculturality and reception, the book looks at the ways in which such memories are being shared, debated and received by museum workers, artists, politicians and general audiences. Due to amplified mobility and communication as well as Europe’s changing institutional structure, such memories become increasingly transcultural, crossing cultural and political borders. This book brings together in-depth researched case studies of memory transmission and reception in different types of media, including films, literature, museums, political debate printed and digital media, as well as studies of personal and public reactions. Contributors are: Ismar Dedović, Astrid Erll, Rosanna Farbøl, Magdalena Góra, Gunnthorunn Gudmundsdottir, Anne Heimo, Sara Jones, Wulf Kansteiner, Slawomir Kapralski, Zoé de Kerangat, Zdzisław Mach, Natalija Majsova, Inge Melchior, Daisy Neijmann, Vjeran Pavlaković, Benedikt Perak, Tea Sindbæk Andersen, and Barbara Törnquist-Plewa.