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Catastrophe 1914
- Europe Goes to War
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 25 hrs and 25 mins
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Publisher's summary
From the acclaimed military historian, a new history of the outbreak of World War I: the dramatic stretch from the breakdown of diplomacy to the battles - the Marne, Ypres, Tannenberg - that marked the frenzied first year before the war bogged down in the trenches.
In Catastrophe 1914, Max Hastings gives us a conflict different from the familiar one of barbed wire, mud, and futility. He traces the path to war, making clear why Germany and Austria-Hungary were primarily to blame, and describes the gripping first clashes in the West, where the French army marched into action in uniforms of red and blue with flags flying and bands playing. In August, four days after the French suffered 27,000 men dead in a single day, the British fought an extraordinary holding action against oncoming Germans, one of the last of its kind in history. In October, at terrible cost the British held the allied line against massive German assaults in the first battle of Ypres. Hastings also recreates the lesser-known battles on the Eastern Front, brutal struggles in Serbia, East Prussia, and Galicia, where the Germans, Austrians, Russians, and Serbs inflicted three million casualties upon one another by Christmas.
As he has done in his celebrated, award-winning works on World War II, Hastings gives us frank assessments of generals and political leaders and masterly analyses of the political currents that led the continent to war. He argues passionately against the contention that the war was not worth the cost, maintaining that Germany’s defeat was vital to the freedom of Europe. Throughout we encounter statesmen, generals, peasants, housewives, and private soldiers of seven nations in Hastings’ accustomed blend of top-down and bottom-up accounts: generals dismounting to lead troops in bayonet charges over 1,500 feet of open ground; farmers who at first decried the requisition of their horses; infantry men engaged in a haggard retreat, sleeping four hours a night in their haste. This is a vivid new portrait of how a continent became embroiled in war and what befell millions of men and women in a conflict that would change everything.
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Critic reviews
“The political and chattering classes are right to be worried: if any region today could cause a crisis comparable to that of 1914, it is the Middle East. They need a new book on the outbreak of World War I, and now they have it in Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War. [Hastings is] an outstanding historian...a victorious foray.... Tuchman has been supplanted.” (Hew Strachan, The New York Times)
“[World War I’s] centennial is almost upon us. Among the resulting flood of books, it’ll be hard to find one better than this early entry...absorbing and compulsively readable.... Like an eagle soaring over this vast terrain, Hastings swoops in and out, spying broad features and telling details alike...superb.” (Alan Cate, The Cleveland Plain Dealer)
“Hastings over the past two decades has become the contemporary premier historian of 20th-century war.... The real strength of this story is how Mr. Hastings portrays the principal characters, not as stereotyped tyrants, greedy empire builders or mindless militarists, but rather as very real human beings with as many flaws as virtues.... Will the past be prologue? Get this book.” (James Srodes, Washington Times)
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An epic of remarkable originality, Alone captures the heroism of World War II as movingly as any book in recent memory. Bringing to vivid life the world leaders, generals, and ordinary citizens who fought on both sides of the war, Michael Korda, the best-selling author of Clouds of Glory, chronicles the outbreak of hostilities, recalling as a prescient young boy the enveloping tension that defined pre-Blitz London, and then as a military historian the great events that would alter the course of the 20th century.
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Exceptional
- By Jean on 11-11-17
By: Michael Korda
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For God and Kaiser
- The Imperial Austrian Army, 1619-1918
- By: Richard Bassett
- Narrated by: Aaron Blain
- Length: 28 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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The definitive history of Austria’s multinational army and its immense role during three centuries of European military history. Among the finest examples of deeply researched military history, For God and Kaiser is a major account of the Habsburg army. It shows how the Imperial Austrian Army, time and again, was a decisive factor in the story of Europe, the balance of international power, and the defense of Christendom...it was the first pan-European army made up of different nationalities and faiths, counting among its soldiers not only Christians but also Muslims, and Jews.
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excellent insight
- By Nicholas on 08-04-19
By: Richard Bassett
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The Fall of the Ottomans
- The Great War in the Middle East
- By: Eugene Rogan
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 17 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Fall of the Ottomans, award-winning historian Eugene Rogan brings the First World War and its immediate aftermath in the Middle East to vivid life, uncovering the often ignored story of the region's crucial role in the conflict.
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Great Book About A Little Known Part of WWI
- By Nostromo on 06-08-15
By: Eugene Rogan
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The Korean War
- By: Max Hastings
- Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
- Length: 17 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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It was the first war we could not win. At no other time since World War II have two superpowers met in battle. Max Hastings, preeminent military historian, takes us back to the bloody, bitter struggle to restore South Korean independence after the Communist invasion of June 1950.
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Inspiring and Hard Hitting
- By David Ewing on 08-06-07
By: Max Hastings
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1914
- The Year The World Ended
- By: Paul Ham
- Narrated by: Robert Meldrum
- Length: 22 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Few years can justly be said to have transformed the earth: 1914 did. In July that year, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, Britain and France were poised to plunge the world into a war that would kill or wound 37 million people, tear down the fabric of society, uproot ancient political systems and set the course for the bloodiest century in human history.
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How the war started
- By Jean on 02-24-14
By: Paul Ham
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Sons of Freedom
- The Forgotten American Soldiers Who Defeated Germany in World War I
- By: Geoffrey Wawro
- Narrated by: Geoffrey Wawro
- Length: 20 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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The American contribution to World War I is one of the great stories of the 20th century, and yet it has all but vanished from view. Historians have dismissed the American war effort as largely economic and symbolic. But as Geoffrey Wawro shows in Sons of Freedom, the French and British were on the verge of collapse in 1918 and would have lost the war without the Doughboys. A major revision of the history of World War I, Sons of Freedom resurrects the brave heroes who saved the Allies, defeated Germany, and established the US as the greatest of the great powers.
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Don't let authors narrate.
- By Bramante on 01-25-19
By: Geoffrey Wawro
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Crimea
- By: Orlando Figes
- Narrated by: Malk Williams
- Length: 20 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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The terrible conflict that dominated the mid-19th century, the Crimean War, killed at least 800,000 men and pitted Russia against a formidable coalition of Britain, France and the Ottoman Empire. It was a war for territory, provoked by fear that if the Ottoman Empire were to collapse then Russia could control a huge swathe of land from the Balkans to the Persian Gulf. But it was also a war of religion, driven by a fervent, populist and ever more ferocious belief by the Tsar and his ministers that it was Russia's task to rule all Orthodox Christians and control the Holy Land.
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Outstanding History of the Crimean War
- By Rick Sailor on 11-08-18
By: Orlando Figes
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The Fall of Berlin 1945
- By: Antony Beevor
- Narrated by: Sean Barrett
- Length: 17 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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The Red Army had much to avenge when it finally reached the frontiers of the Third Reich in January 1945. Frenzied by their terrible experiences with Wehrmacht and SS brutality, they wreaked havoc - tanks crushing refugee columns, mass rape, pillage, and unimaginable destruction. Hundreds of thousands of women and children froze to death or were massacred; more than seven million fled westward from the fury of the Red Army. It was the most terrifying example of fire and sword ever known.
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Engrossing
- By Salui on 09-06-16
By: Antony Beevor
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Stalingrad
- The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943
- By: Antony Beevor
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 6 hrs and 14 mins
- Abridged
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In August 1942, an overconfident Adolf Hitler would attempt to invade Stalin's namesake city on the Volga. The battle of Stalingrad is extraordinary in every way: the triumphant invader fought to a standstill; then the Soviet trap sprung, surrounding their attackers; and the terrible siege, with Germans starving and freezing, forced to fight on by a disbelieving Hitler.
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Audible! Pls provide Michael Tudor Barnes
- By Anand on 07-02-15
By: Antony Beevor
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All the King's Men
- The British Soldier from the Restoration to Waterloo
- By: Saul David
- Narrated by: Sean Barrett
- Length: 18 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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The unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Saul David's comprehensive history, All the King's Men: The British Soldier from the Restoration to Waterloo, read by the actor Sean Barrett. "The British soldier," wrote a Prussian officer who served with Wellington, "is vigorous, well fed, by nature highly brave and intrepid, trained to the most vigorous discipline, and admirably well-armed...
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A grand epic
- By Mark Henman on 09-03-12
By: Saul David
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From one of our finest military historians, a monumental work that shows us at once the truly global reach of World War II and its deeply personal consequences.
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Superb
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In his critically acclaimed Armageddon, Hastings detailed the last twelve months of the struggle for Germany. Here, in what can be considered a companion volume, he covers the horrific story of the war against Japan. By the summer of 1944 it was clear that Japan’s defeat was inevitable, but how the drive to victory would be achieved remained to be seen. The ensuing drama–that ended in Japan’s utter devastation–was acted out across the vast stage of Asia.
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A superb study by one of the world's finest histor
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A vivid and incisive portrait of Winston Churchill during wartime from acclaimed historian Max Hastings, Winston’s War captures the full range of Churchill’s endlessly fascinating character. At once brilliant and infuriating, self-important and courageous, Hastings’s Churchill comes brashly to life as never before. Beginning in 1940, when popular demand elevated Churchill to the role of prime minister, and concluding with the end of the war, Hastings shows us Churchill at his most intrepid and essential, when, by sheer force of will, he kept Britain from collapsing.
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A very different Churchill
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The War That Ended Peace
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From the best-selling and award-winning author of Paris 1919 comes a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, a fascinating portrait of Europe from 1900 up to the outbreak of World War I.
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Detailed review of 1882 to 1914
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The Secret War
- Spies, Ciphers, and Guerrillas, 1939-1945
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Spies, codes, and guerrillas played unprecedentedly critical roles in the Second World War, exploited by every nation in the struggle to gain secret knowledge of its foes, and to sow havoc behind the fronts. In The Secret War, Max Hastings presents a worldwide cast of characters and some extraordinary sagas of intelligence and resistance, to create a new perspective on the greatest conflict in history.
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Better read than listened to
- By B. In -t Veld on 03-25-17
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Vietnam
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Vietnam became the Western world’s most divisive modern conflict, precipitating a battlefield humiliation for France in 1954, then a vastly greater one for the US in 1975. Max Hastings has spent the past three years interviewing scores of participants on both sides, as well as researching a multitude of American and Vietnamese documents and memoirs, to create an epic narrative of an epic struggle. Here are the vivid realities of strife amid jungle and paddies that killed two million people.
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A more nuanced view than Ken Burns' companion book
- By Vu on 10-21-18
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Inferno
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From one of our finest military historians, a monumental work that shows us at once the truly global reach of World War II and its deeply personal consequences.
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Superb
- By David on 04-05-21
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Retribution
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In his critically acclaimed Armageddon, Hastings detailed the last twelve months of the struggle for Germany. Here, in what can be considered a companion volume, he covers the horrific story of the war against Japan. By the summer of 1944 it was clear that Japan’s defeat was inevitable, but how the drive to victory would be achieved remained to be seen. The ensuing drama–that ended in Japan’s utter devastation–was acted out across the vast stage of Asia.
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A superb study by one of the world's finest histor
- By Easton Reader on 12-22-16
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Winston's War
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A vivid and incisive portrait of Winston Churchill during wartime from acclaimed historian Max Hastings, Winston’s War captures the full range of Churchill’s endlessly fascinating character. At once brilliant and infuriating, self-important and courageous, Hastings’s Churchill comes brashly to life as never before. Beginning in 1940, when popular demand elevated Churchill to the role of prime minister, and concluding with the end of the war, Hastings shows us Churchill at his most intrepid and essential, when, by sheer force of will, he kept Britain from collapsing.
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A very different Churchill
- By Mike From Mesa on 10-03-13
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The War That Ended Peace
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From the best-selling and award-winning author of Paris 1919 comes a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, a fascinating portrait of Europe from 1900 up to the outbreak of World War I.
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Detailed review of 1882 to 1914
- By smarmer on 04-06-14
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The Secret War
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Spies, codes, and guerrillas played unprecedentedly critical roles in the Second World War, exploited by every nation in the struggle to gain secret knowledge of its foes, and to sow havoc behind the fronts. In The Secret War, Max Hastings presents a worldwide cast of characters and some extraordinary sagas of intelligence and resistance, to create a new perspective on the greatest conflict in history.
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Better read than listened to
- By B. In -t Veld on 03-25-17
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Vietnam
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Vietnam became the Western world’s most divisive modern conflict, precipitating a battlefield humiliation for France in 1954, then a vastly greater one for the US in 1975. Max Hastings has spent the past three years interviewing scores of participants on both sides, as well as researching a multitude of American and Vietnamese documents and memoirs, to create an epic narrative of an epic struggle. Here are the vivid realities of strife amid jungle and paddies that killed two million people.
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A more nuanced view than Ken Burns' companion book
- By Vu on 10-21-18
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The Abyss
- Nuclear Crisis Cuba 1962
- By: Max Hastings
- Narrated by: Max Hastings, John Hopkins
- Length: 19 hrs and 9 mins
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Bestselling author Max Hastings offers a welcome re-evaluation of one of the most gripping and tense international events in modern history—the Cuban Missile Crisis—providing a people-focused narrative that explores the attitudes and conduct of Russians, Cubans, Americans, and a terrified world that followed each moment as it unfolded.
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Good book, but has some issues
- By Mike From Mesa on 11-10-22
By: Max Hastings
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The Korean War
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It was the first war we could not win. At no other time since World War II have two superpowers met in battle. Max Hastings, preeminent military historian, takes us back to the bloody, bitter struggle to restore South Korean independence after the Communist invasion of June 1950.
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Inspiring and Hard Hitting
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A World Undone
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On a summer day in 1914, a nineteen-year-old Serbian nationalist gunned down Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. While the world slumbered, monumental forces were shaken. In less than a month, a combination of ambition, deceit, fear, jealousy, missed opportunities, and miscalculation sent Austro-Hungarian troops marching into Serbia, German troops streaming toward Paris, and a vast Russian army into war, with England as its ally. As crowds cheered their armies on, no one could guess what lay ahead in the First World War.
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A great book!
- By Jodi Bernard on 07-11-23
By: G. J. Meyer
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Collapse
- How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
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In his million-copy best seller Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond examined how and why Western civilizations developed the technologies and immunities that allowed them to dominate much of the world. Now in this brilliant companion volume, Diamond probes the other side of the equation: what caused some of the great civilizations of the past to collapse into ruin, and what can we learn from their fates?
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an fascinating book, but better on paper
- By Rebecca on 04-11-05
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July 1914: Countdown to War
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When a Serbian-backed assassin gunned down Archduke Franz Ferdinand in late June 1914, the world seemed unmoved. Even Ferdinand’s own uncle, Franz Josef I, was notably ambivalent about the death of the Hapsburg heir, saying simply, "It is God’s will." Certainly, there was nothing to suggest that the episode would lead to conflictmuch less a world war of such massive and horrific proportions that it would fundamentally reshape the course of human events.
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Great Book, Narrator Isn't the Best though
- By Richard Valdez on 08-31-13
By: Sean McMeekin
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The First World War
- By: John Keegan
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The First World War created the modern world. A conflict of unprecedented ferocity, it abruptly ended the relative peace and prosperity of the Victorian era, unleashing such demons of the 20th century as mechanized warfare and mass death. It also helped to usher in the ideas that have shaped our times - modernism in the arts, new approaches to psychology and medicine, radical thoughts about economics and society - and in so doing shattered the faith in rationalism and liberalism that had prevailed in Europe since the Enlightenment.
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Best Military History of First World War
- By Stephen F (SPFJR) on 06-13-19
By: John Keegan
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Soldiers
- Great Stories of War and Peace
- By: Max Hastings
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- Unabridged
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Soldiers is a very personal gathering of sparkling, gripping tales by many writers, about men and women who have borne arms, reflecting best-selling historian Max Hastings’ lifetime of studying war. It rings the changes through the centuries, between the heroic, tragic and comic; the famous and the humble. The nearly 350 stories illustrate vividly what it is like to fight in wars, to live and die as a warrior, from Greek and Roman times through to recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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Worth the Read
- By David A on 10-31-21
By: Max Hastings
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The Sleepwalkers
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The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 is historian Christopher Clark’s riveting account of the explosive beginnings of World War I. Drawing on new scholarship, Clark offers a fresh look at World War I, focusing not on the battles and atrocities of the war itself, but on the complex events and relationships that led a group of well-meaning leaders into brutal conflict.
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Excellent, but
- By James A. Nietopski on 03-12-22
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World War Two
- A Graphic Account of the Greatest and Most Terrible Event in Human History (All You Need to Know)
- By: Sir Max Hastings
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Within Western culture, World War Two continues to exercise an extraordinary fascination for generations unborn when it took place. The obvious explanation is that it was the greatest and most terrible event in human history. Within the vast compass of the struggle, some individuals scaled summits of courage and nobility, while others plumbed depths of evil, in a fashion that compels the awe of posterity.
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Takeaways from our most eloquent living historian
- By Ted on 10-16-22
By: Sir Max Hastings
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The Guns of August
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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.
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Wonderful
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The Reformation
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At a time when men and women were prepared to kill - and be killed - for their faith, the Protestant Reformation tore the Western world apart. Acclaimed as the definitive account of these epochal events, Diarmaid MacCulloch's award-winning history brilliantly recreates the religious battles of priests, monarchs, scholars, and politicians - from the zealous Martin Luther and his 95 Theses to the polemical John Calvin to the radical Igantius Loyola, from the tortured Thomas Cranmer to the ambitious Philip II.
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Excellent
- By Eli Shem Tov on 05-15-17
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World History
- From the Ancient World to the Information Age
- By: Philip Parker
- Narrated by: Joan Walker
- Length: 12 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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A truly global view of history covering over 350 of the world's most important turning points. This is an essential audiobook for every history buff. World History is the most accessible guide to the history of human civilization, covering the Neanderthals, the Assyrian Empire, Chinese dynasties, Vikings, World War I, apartheid, the rise of ISIS, and everything in between. This remarkable audiobook offers the most up-to-date coverage of global history, up to and including the Arab Spring, global terror, Russia and Ukraine, and the rise of populism in the EU.
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Pretty good book overall.
- By Anonymous User on 11-02-22
By: Philip Parker
What listeners say about Catastrophe 1914
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Benjamin
- 01-26-23
Amazing author, excellent voice actor
Max Hastings is a legend. Simon Vance is a legend. Really well written and read.
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- Adriana Bate
- 05-02-24
The breadth and comprehensiveness of the research.
The single best book on WWI that I have ever experienced. Engrossing, fascinating, superb, and awe inspiring.
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- Donald J. Bentley
- 08-09-24
Many individual stories
This book contains many examples of how individuals experienced the war. At times the narrative bounced around between unrelated stories, which was a bit confusing.
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- Jason Jablonski
- 09-09-24
Wish there was more focus on the causes and start, and the consequences when it ended.
I wish this book focused more of the causes and the start of the war, the latter half was a slog… and it just ends without discussing the results politically. I get that’s what the war was like, but it left the political issues more to pride and stupidity, but didn’t explain where the pride and stupidity came from.
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- D. Baker
- 03-12-22
Sobering
As indicated in the headline, this is a sobering lesson on a horrific period of human history. Max Hastings is a great writer and clearly did his research. As is always the case, Simon Vance makes the words come alive. I think I'd listen to him read the phone book, (Are there still such things?)
My only complaint is that Hastings' frequently uses quotes in languages other than English, most often in French, and they are rarely translated. I realize that it is a failing on my part to be largely ignorant of languages other than my native tongue, but I feel I missed out on some of the important insights Hastings felt needed to be added to the narrative. It should have been relatively easy for Mr. Vance to provide a quick translation.
In summary, it is a long book, but well worth the time. Just be prepared for an overwhelming sadness because of Man's inhumanity.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 04-02-21
I thought I knew the battle of the frontiers
I really enjoy Max Hastings. I didn't buy this book right away but I'm glad I did. If you like the Guns of August you'll enjoy this book. I really enjoyed the new perspective of August 1914. The first half of the books was fantastic. The second half was some of the most boring material I've ever heard! oh my goodness it was unbearably boring. For some reason the Marne was mixed up in all of this boring stuff and it was a weird pacing choice for the book. All in all excellent and I'll listen again and again.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Todd Bishop
- 12-09-22
Humanity in brutality
Hastings does a very good job in bringing forward many human viewpoints and quotations into what is normally taught only at a macro political level. Sometimes goes into the weeds a bit and my focus would waver but that’s just my opinion, your mileage may vary. More than worth your time and Simon Vance is a top notch narrator for this type of material.
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- Ellen
- 09-08-23
Very informative
So much can happen in a short period of time and the period from the assassination of Franz Ferdinand to the Christmas truce, this has told me so much of the wars first year, months, even. And how the perceptions of war that we see today can be traced back to this catastrophe.
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1 person found this helpful
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- vincenzopro
- 10-25-24
Great book.
Good book on the opening year of WWI. Hastings is a great writer. Narrator is good as well.
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- SAM LARSEN, ARTIST USA
- 01-15-22
Knowing Something More
Knowing something more than we did before the Great War. Why would it matter if we found out why it happened? We think we knew. Maybe we could find out more? What for? Because it may mean enough to us that we might actually learn enough to enjoy a lasting world peace. Wishful thinking unless every nation subscribed to and practiced with us. This is as humorous as it is a behind the scene before the production of the Great War.
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1 person found this helpful