Pandoras Box: A History of the First World War

Winner of the Norman B. Tomlinson, Jr. Prize

The best large-scale synthesis in any language of what we currently know and understand about this multidimensional, cataclysmic conflict.
Richard J. Evans, Times Literary Supplement

In this monumental history of the First World War, Germanys leading historian of the period offers a dramatic account of its origins, course, and consequences. Jörn Leonhard treats the clash of arms with a sure feel for grand strategy. He captures the slow attrition, the race for ever more destructive technologies, and the grim experiences of frontline soldiers. But the war was more than a military conflict and he also gives us the perspectives of leaders, intellectuals, artists, and ordinary men and women around the world as they grappled with the urgency of the moment and the rise of unprecedented political and social pressures. With an unrivaled combination of depth and global reach, Pandoras Box reveals how profoundly the war shaped the world to come.

[An] epic and magnificent workunquestionably, for me, the best single-volume history of the war I have ever readIt is the most formidable attempt to make the war to end all wars comprehensible as a whole.
Simon Heffer, The Spectator

[A] great book on the Great WarLeonhard succeeds in being comprehensive without falling prey to the temptation of being encyclopedic. He writes fluently and judiciously.
Adam Tooze, Die Zeit

Extremely readable, lucidly structured, focused, and dynamicLeonhards analysis is enlivened by a sharp eye for concrete situations and an ear for the voices that best convey the meaning of change for the people and societies undergoing it.
Christopher Clark, author of The Sleepwalkers