The most comprehensive, accurate, dramatic book about the causes and triggers of the Great War. On the morning of June 28, 1914, when Archduke Ferdinand, heir to Austria, arrived with his wife at the Sarajevo train station, Europe was still at peace. Thirty-seven days later, it was at war. The ensuing conflict left over fifteen million dead, destroyed three empires, and radically changed world history.

How could the Balkans – a region distant from the European centers of power and wealth – become the focal point of such a drama? Christopher Clark resists the temptation to assign the blame for the ignition to a single cause or a unique country. He traces the pathways that led to war, passing through all the critical decision-making centers in Vienna, Berlin, Petrograd, Paris, London, Belgrade, and following the rapid developments minute by minute.

In doing so, he reveals a fragmented world of instability and conflict, a Europe burdened by a fatal and ineffectual group of political leaders. These rulers, who prided themselves on their modernity and rationality, stumbled from crisis to crisis until they convinced themselves that war was the only answer.

A masterfully written and thoroughly documented book based on new research, The Sleepwalkers is the impressive account of the ignition and explosion of one of the largest events in modern history.