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 century's first terrible act of self-immolation - what was then called `The Great War'. In this centenary year, 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.
`Catastrophe' offers some answers to the huge question `what happened to Europe in 1914?' Through Hastings's accustomed blend of top-down and bottom-up accounts from a multitude of statesmen and generals, peasants, housewives and private soldiers of seven nations, the book pricks myths and presents some striking and controversial judgements to offer an engrossing and deeply moving account of this misunderstood conflict.
Author Biography
Max Hastings is the author of twenty-six books, most about conflict, and between 1986 and 2002 served as editor-in-chief of the Daily Telegraph, then editor of the Evening Standard. He has won many prizes both for journalism and his books, of which the most recent are All Hell Let Loose, Catastrophe and The Secret War, best-sellers translated around the world. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, an Honorary Fellow of King's College, London and was knighted in 2002. He has two grown-up children, Charlotte and Harry, and lives with his wife Penny in West Berkshire, where they garden enthusiastically.
