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I just finished reading "The Sleepwalkers" by Christopher Clark. It took me a long time to read it. It was substantial - 562 pages not including notes, and Clark is an academic (Professor in Modern European History at Cambridge). However, his style was quite readable. What made it such a long read for me was that it was challenging views and assumptions about the origins of World War 1 that I have held all my life, so I had to break frequently to think about what I was reading. Barbara Tuchman's "The Guns of August" made a deep impression on me when I read it as a young adult, and in many ways it accorded with the accepted wisdom of the mellieu I grew up in - when I was in high school, there were still many active WW1 veterans in my community, and I absorbed the prevailing wisdom of the place and time.
I don't think that I will be throwing overboard all of my previous viewpoint on the origins of World War 1, but "The Sleepwalkers" did suggest to me a more nuanced view. This summer is the 100th anniversary of the start of World War 1, arguably the most transformative event in modern history since the French Revolution. if you are interested in the origins of World War 1, you might have a look at "The Sleepwalkers", but balance it by reading "The Guns of August". For me, "The Sleepwalkers" is one of the most interesting books that I have read in years.
JFK was supposed to have been impressed by "The Guns of August", and reportedly told Robert Kennedy that he did not want a future book to be titled "The Missiles of October". I wonder what he would have made of "The Sleepwalkers"?
The last sentence in "The Sleepwalkers":
"... the protagonists of 1914 were sleepwalkers, watchful but unseeing, haunted by dreams, yet blind to the reality of the horror they were about to bring into the world."
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