Book Review: 'Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War'
Dust jacket design: Eric White. © 2013 Alfred A. Knopf On September 24, 2013, 99 years and one day after Japan – in an ironic historical twist – declared war on her future Axis partner Germany, Alfred A. Knopf published Sir Max Hastings' Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War, the U.S. edition of the esteemed British historian's account of World War One's first five months. Published in Britain as Catastrophe, the book examines the diplomatic, military, and human errors in judgment that led to the outbreak of Europe in the summer of 1914 and set in motion the chain of events that caused future horrors in the 20th Century and beyond. In this nearly 700-page volume, Hastings focuses exclusively on the conflict – known then by most people as "the Great War," although some prescient German writers called it der Weltkrieg: "the World War" – in the Eastern and Western Fronts in Europe. (In his introduction, Hastings writes, "Hew Strachan, in the first...