The Sleepwalkers

By Christopher Clark,

Book cover of The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914

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…

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Why read it?

3 authors picked The Sleepwalkers as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

This is a book on one of the most dramatic periods in international history. Why were political leaders and diplomats in the 1910s unable to stop the world’s descent into chaos and global conflict?

In addition to providing exceptional detail on key historical episodes, the book also highlights how easy it is for localized conflict to escalate and expand, with disastrous consequences. 

From Lorena's list on diplomacy and how it works.

I usually get bored by very long books too full of dates, people you have never heard of, and endless details, and I am a historian! But I make an exception for this book.

Clark took me back vividly to a period in history that has been covered so often by rewriting the old storylines of WWI with flair and freshness. I came to better understand why World War I was not just a fluke, started by the black swan event of the assassination of the Austrian heir to the throne and his wife in a backwater of the empire…

From Elliot's list on war and collective memory.

This is the history I wish I’d learned at school. History has always been an interest of mine, but far too often history books focus on what is possibly best described as the winner’s reason for going to war, or how one ‘nation’ did all these wonderful things… That’s how it is taught at school, and for most of us, that’s all we ever learn.

I count myself fortunate to have had teachers in this subject, like Professor Clark, who taught us to look at the ‘little’ people involved, and especially at how ‘history’ is almost never a single isolated…

From Patrick's list on the Battle of Jutland.

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Tap Dancing on Everest by Mimi Zieman,

Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

The team attempts a new route up…

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