La Primera Guerra Mundial contada para escépticos

The history of the First World War narrated in an original and entertaining way to learn what history books don't explain.

1914. A hundred years ago... Europe was experiencing a golden plenitude. Scientific and technical advances promised a happy future, without famines or wars. But a Serbian terrorist assassinated the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and his wife during a parade in Sarajevo. This isolated event caused a domino effect that dragged more than fifty countries into war. In four years of conflict, the Great War devastated Europe and ruined the four empires that dominated the Earth. The consequences of that cataclysm still persist in the unstable world we have inherited. Throughout these pages, the reader will contemplate the unprecedented ravages of the new mechanized warfare imposed by machine guns, tanks, and asphyxiating gases in the muddy and bloody fields crisscrossed by labyrinthine trenches. Alongside these horrors, the reader will meet the seductive Mata Hari and the legendary Red Baron, who toasts with a new silver cup for each downed airplane. Also Rasputin, the unsettling and corpulent monk who seduces the ladies of the Russian court.

The reader will travel in the sealed train that took Lenin to Russia in the company of his wife and his lover, will fly over Africa in a zeppelin, will witness the assassination of the Tsar's family, will be surprised by the pastimes of the troops, by the customs of the brothels, by the spies who swarmed the luxury hotels of Madrid and by a thousand particular stories of anonymous young men and future great men who would never be the same after that decisive experience.

The history of the First World War narrated in an original and entertaining way to learn what history books don't explain.

1914. A hundred years ago... Europe was experiencing a golden plenitude. Scientific and technical advances promised a happy future, without famines or wars. But a Serbian terrorist assassinated the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and his wife during a parade in Sarajevo. This isolated event caused a domino effect that dragged more than fifty countries into war. In four years of conflict, the Great War devastated Europe and ruined the four empires that dominated the Earth. The consequences of that cataclysm still persist in the unstable world we have inherited. Throughout these pages, the reader will contemplate the unprecedented ravages of the new mechanized warfare imposed by machine guns, tanks, and asphyxiating gases in the muddy and bloody fields crisscrossed by labyrinthine trenches. Alongside these horrors, the reader will meet the seductive Mata Hari and the legendary Red Baron, who toasts with a new silver cup for each downed airplane. Also Rasputin, the unsettling and corpulent monk who seduces the ladies of the Russian court.

The reader will travel in the sealed train that took Lenin to Russia in the company of his wife and his lover, will fly over Africa in a zeppelin, will witness the assassination of the Tsar's family, will be surprised by the pastimes of the troops, by the customs of the brothels, by the spies who swarmed the luxury hotels of Madrid and by a thousand particular stories of anonymous young men and future great men who would never be the same after that decisive experience.