![]() His thesis is that World War I is not a hoary event shrouded in the mists and mysteries of another age, but a thoroughly modern affair, begun in a way familiar to us today: by a terrorist group that worshipped sacrifice and death, had no clear geographic moorings, and was scattered across a vast area of festering grievances and unrequited dreams. Though he does not provide a verdict, Clark’s view nonetheless is revelatory, even revolutionary. But no one who examines the question will be able to ignore “The Sleepwalkers,’’ the monumental new volume by Cambridge University historian Christopher Clark that addresses this issue. There are too many factors, too many moving parts and, alas, too many (contradictory) documents to produce an ironclad answer. ![]() That question won’t be settled by the 100th anniversary of the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand a year from this summer. For a century the question of the origins of World War I has bedeviled historians, who have struggled to determine whether a conflict that claimed 20 million livesĪnd prompted the death of three empires could have been avoided and, if not, who was to blame. ![]()
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