A world undone: the story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918

✍ Scribed by G. J. Meyer

• Publisher: New York : Delacorte Press, 2006.
• Year: 2006
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 2 MB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN-13: 9780553803549

✦ Synopsis

SUMMARY:
''The First World War is one of history's greatest tragedies. In this remarkable and intimate account, author G. J. Meyer draws on exhaustive research to bring to life the story of how the Great War reduced Europe's mightiest empires to rubble, killed twenty million people, and cracked the foundations of the world we live in today.'' ''On a summer day in 1914, a nineteen-year-old Serbian nationalist gunned down the visiting archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. While the world slumbered, great, creaking forces were shaken. In less than five weeks, like an avalanche, a combination of ambition, deceit, fear, jealousy, missed opportunities, and miscalculations sent Austro-Hungarian troops marching into Serbia, German troops streaming toward Paris, and a vast Russian army into war, with England as its ally. With crowds cheering their armies on, no one could guess at what lay ahead: four long years of deadlock and slaughter, physical and moral exhaustion, and finally the near collapse of a civilization that until 1914 had dominated the globe.'' ''Even within the belligerent countries, politicians and generals fought bitterly over how to end the stalemate, and government after government fell. It was not until the entry into the war of the United States, and Germany's desperate decision to risk everything on a last throw of the dice, that the nightmare began to move to its terrible conclusion. When it was over, a new era of total war had begun, and the stage had been set for the twentieth century's long list of catastrophes.''--BOOK JACKET.