Book description
In The Sleepwalkers acclaimed historian and author of
Iron Kingdom, Christopher Clark, examines
the causes of the First World War.
SUNDAY TIMES and INDEPENDENT BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2012
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 and its causes.
Drawing on many fresh new sources, this account reveals a Europe
very different from the familiar picture, putting Serbia and the
Balkans at the centre of the story. Starting with the brutal
assassination of Alexander I of Serbia in 1903, Clark shows how, far
from being the place of enviable stability it appears to us, Europe
was racked by chronic problems: a multipolar, fractured, multicultural
world of clashing ideals, terrorism, militancy and instability, which
was, fatefully, saddled with a conspicuously ineffectual set of
political leaders. He shows how the rulers of Europe, who prided
themselves on their modernity and rationalism, behaved like
sleepwalkers, stumbling through crisis after crisis and finally
convincing themselves that war was the only answer.
Reviews:
'Formidable ... one of the most impressive and stimulating studies
of the period ever published' Max Hastings, Sunday Times
'The arguments [Clark] sets out in this quite superb account of the
causes of the First World War are so compelling that they effectively
consign the old historical consensus to the bin ... a masterpiece.
It's not often that one has the privilege of reading a book that
reforges our understanding of one of the seminal events of world
history'
Mail Online
'Impeccably researched, provocatively argued and elegantly written,
his book is a model of scholarship'
Sunday Times, Books of the Year 2012
'A lovingly researched work of the highest scholarship. It is hard
to believe we will ever see a better narrative of what was perhaps the
biggest collective blunder in the history of international relations'
Niall Ferguson
'A brilliant contribution' Times Higher Education
'Clark is fully alive to the challenges of the subject. Planting
himself at the contingent end of the spectrum, he prefers to establish
how the war happened rather than to explain why by means of hindsight
... It is a refreshing approach. He provides vivid portraits of
leading figures ... [He] also gives a rich sense of what
contemporaries believed was at stake in the crises leading up to the
war'
Irish Times
About the author:
Christopher Clark is Professor of Modern History at the University
of Cambridge and a Fellow of St Catharine's College. He is the author
of The Politics of Conversion, Kaiser Wilhelm II
and Iron Kingdom. Widely praised around the world, Iron Kingdom
became a major bestseller. He has been awarded the Officer's Cross of
the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Christopher Clark is Professor of Modern History at the University of
Cambridge and a Fellow of St Catharine's College. He is the author of
The Politics of Conversion
,
Kaiser Wilhelm II
and
Iron
Kingdom
. Widely praised around the world,
Iron
Kingdom
became a major bestseller. He has been awarded the Officer's Cross of
the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.
