A review by jeffburns
The Trigger: Hunting the Assassin Who Brought the World to War by Tim Butcher

5.0

Butcher travels to rural Bosnia to begin the story of Princip, a boy from a poor subsistence farming family whose descendants still live in the tiny village, much as they have for generations and follows his path from there to Sarajevo, then Belgrade, then back to Sarajevo for the fateful act. Butcher is a great storyteller and a consummate old-school journalist, and it comes through in his work. First, he immerses himself in research and then he talks to people and faithfully tells their stories. However, the book is not just about the assassination. Butcher himself was a war correspondent who covered the Balkans in the 1990s. He manages to weave the story of the assassination into the intricate fabric of the Balkans, a region shaped by hundreds of years of conflict. It’s a great read.