On a summer day in 1914, a nineteen-year-old Serbian nationalist gunned down Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. 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 Britain as her ally.
No one could guess what lay ahead: years of slaughter, physical and moral exhaustion, and the near collapse of a civilization that until that moment had dominated the globe.


