The Amazon History Book of the Year 2013 is a magisterial chronicle of the calamity that befell Europe in 1914 as the continent shifted from the glamour of the Edwardian era to the tragedy of total war.In 1914, Europe plunged into the 20th centurys first terrible act of self-immolationwhat was then called The Great War.On the eve of its centenary, Max Hastings seeks to explain both how the conflict came about and what befell millions of men and women during the first months of strife.He finds the evidence overwhelming, that Austria and Germany must accept principal blame for the outbreak.While what followed was a vast tragedy, he argues passionately against thepoetsview, that the war was not worth winning. It was vital to the freedom of Europe, he says, that the Kaisers Germany should be defeated.His narrative of the early battles will astonish those whose images of the war are simply of mud, wire, trenches and steel helmets.Hastings describes how the French Army marched into