Catastrophe : Europe goes to war 1914
In 'Catastrophe', Max Hastings answers how World War I could ever have begun. Ranging across Europe, from Paris to St. Petersburg, from kings to corporals, he traces how tensions across the continent kindled into a blaze of battles; not the stalemates of later trench-warfare but battles of movement and dash where Napoleonic tactics met with weapons from a newly industrialised age.