[Read by Wanda McCaddon -aka- Nadia May] *Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award *One of AudioFile's Best Voices of 2009 for History: Wanda McCaddon Winner of the 1963 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction In this Pulitzer Prize-winning classic, historian Barbara Tuchman brings to life the people and events that led up to World War I. This was the last gasp of the Gilded Age, of kings and kaisers and czars, of pointed or plumed hats, colored uniforms, and all the pomp and romance that went along with war. How quickly it all changed and how horrible it became. Tuchman masterfully portrays this transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth century, focusing on the turning point in the year 1914, the month leading up to the war, and the first month of the war. With fine attention to detail, she reveals how and why the war started and why it could have been stopped but wasn't, managing to make the story utterly suspenseful even when we already know the outcome.