The enormous weight of its quality inspires amazement and awe …Īcademics should take note: Good history can still be a good story’ Washington Post’A lovingly researched work of the highest scholarship.

Reviews:’Formidable … one of the most impressive and stimulating studies of the period ever published’ Max Hastings, Sunday Times’Easily the best book ever written on the subject …Ī work of rare beauty that combines meticulous research with sensitive analysis and elegant prose. In The Sleepwalkers Christopher Clark retells the story of the outbreak of the First World War and its causes.Ībove all, it shows how the failure to understand the seriousness of the chaotic, near genocidal fighting in the Balkans would drag Europe into catastrophe. What made a seemingly prosperous and complacent Europe so vulnerable to the impact of this assassination?

The pacy, sensitive and formidably argued history of the causes of the First World War, from acclaimed historian and author Christopher ClarkFINANCIAL TIMES BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2014SUNDAY TIMES and INDEPENDENT BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2012Winner of the Los Angeles Times History Book Prize 2014The 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.Īn 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.

The sleepwalkers clark