The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914. BY CHRISTOPHER CLARK. Harper, 2013, 736 pp. $29.99 (paper, $18.99).
Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War. BY MAX HASTINGS. Knopf, 2013, 672 pp. $35.00 (paper, $17.95).
The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914. BY MARGARET MACMILLAN. Random House, 2013, 784 pp. $35.00 (paper, $20.00).
July 1914: Countdown to War. BY SEAN MCMEEKIN. Basic Books, 2013, 461 pp. $29.99.
The Great War for Peace. BY WILLIAM MULLIGAN. Yale University Press, 2014, 456 pp. $35.00.
July Crisis: The World’s Descent Into War, Summer 1914. BY THOMAS OTTE. Cambridge University Press, 2014, 555 pp. $29.99.
The Cambridge History of the First World War. Vol. 1, Global War. EDITED BY JAY WINTER. Cambridge University Press, 2014, 771 pp. $150.00.
The diplomat George Kennan described World War I as “the great seminal catastrophe” of the twentieth century, because it led to so many further catastrophes. The flap of the butterfly’s wings that set off the subsequent hurricanes came on June 28, 1914, when the Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Francis Ferdinand, the heir apparent to the Austro-Hungarian throne. One hundred years later, historians still wonder how such a cataclysmic war came almost out of nowhere, deplore the failure of foolish governments to understand where their actions could lead, and mourn the loss of an imagined world of progress and harmony.
One response to this catastrophe was the systematic study of international affairs. Scholars in the 1920s and 1930s hoped that by analyzing the causes of war...