'A lovingly researched work of the highest scholarship. Academics should take note: Good history can still be a good story' Washington Post The enormous weight of its quality inspires amazement and awe. A work of rare beauty that combines meticulous research with sensitive analysis and elegant prose. 'Easily the best book ever written on the subject. one of the most impressive and stimulating studies of the period ever published' Max Hastings, Sunday Times Above all, it shows how the failure to understand the seriousness of the chaotic, near genocidal fighting in the Balkans would drag Europe into catastrophe. In The Sleepwalkers Christopher Clark retells the story of the outbreak of the First World War and its causes. What made a seemingly prosperous and complacent Europe so vulnerable to the impact of this assassination? 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.

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. Winner of the Los Angeles Times History Book Prize 2014 SUNDAY TIMES and INDEPENDENT BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2012

The pacy, sensitive and formidably argued history of the causes of the First World War, from acclaimed historian and author Christopher Clark

The sleepwalkers book review