NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
The New York Times Book Review • The Economist • The Christian Science Monitor • Bloomberg Businessweek • The Globe and Mail

From the bestselling and award-winning author of Paris 1919 comes a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, a fascinating portrait of Europe from 1900 up to the outbreak of World War I.
 
The century since

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In the summer of 1914 most of Europe plunged into a war so catastrophic that it unhinged the continent's politics and beliefs in a way that took generations to recover from. The disaster terrified its survivors, shocked that a civilization that had blandly assumed itself to be a model for the rest of the world had collapsed into a chaotic savagery beyond any comparison. In 1939 Europeans would initiate a second conflict that managed to be even worse...

World War I revisits "the causes of the war, its early years and the American entrance into the conflict" through to the celebration "with all America as the war ends and the world has been made safe for democracy." The history of World War II "retraces the birth of the war and records the initial Axis' success as their rampage goes unchecked; America's entry into the war "as the war is suddenly thrust upon the United States at Pearl Harbor and how...