After reading the Phalanx’s satirical tribute to Gavrilo Princip, one is tempted to posthumously award him the “Biggest Douche of the Century” award. But I think that’s just a little to easy. The one thing we can be sure of, is that we can’t be sure of what would’ve become of the world without the ever-reverberating effects of the “Great War.” Heck, France might still be a superpower, China a symbol of industrial might, oil might be flowing freely and prosperously in a civilized middle-east…

An old-world, continental “anarchist,” Princip was (or was not) acting by himself (or as part of a grand conspiracy) with the assistance of the Germans (or the Austrians) and the West did not (or they did) know about it and so they sat idly by (or some people tried to stop it.) David Fromkin’s Europe’s Last Summer is a wonderfully written exposé of pretty much all the behind-the-scenes conniving and backstabbing that helped raise an utterly inconsequential Balkan conflict into the greatest destruction man had ever known. Spoiler: It wasn’t all Princip’s fault.

Well worth the $12 or so at Amazon: