A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Drawing on exhaustive research, this “masterful narrative history” (Booklist) details how World War I reduced Europe’s mightiest empires to rubble, killed twenty million people, and cracked the foundations of our modern world.

“Thundering, magnificent . . . [A World Undone] is a book of true greatness that prompts moments of sheer joy and pleasure. . . . It will earn generations of admirers.”—The Washington Times

On a summer day in 1914, a nineteen-year-old Serbian nationalist gunned down Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. While the world slumbered, monumental forces were shaken. In less than a month, a combination of ambition, deceit, fear, jealousy, missed opportunities, and miscalculation sent Austro-Hungarian troops marching into Serbia, German troops streaming toward Paris, and a vast Russian army into war, with England as its ally. As crowds cheered their armies on, no one could guess what lay ahead in the First World War: four long years of slaughter, physical and moral exhaustion, and the near collapse of a civilization that until 1914 had dominated the globe.

Filled with stunning insight and unforgettable scenes of courage, tragedy, and outrage, A World Undone is an extraordinary portrait of human folly and bravery on the grandest scale. G. J. Meyer breathes life into the past, challenging conventional wisdom as he reexamines some of the greatest misconceptions about the war—and offers a vision of history as we have never seen it before.