A review by leslielu67
The Trigger: Hunting the Assassin Who Brought the World to War by Tim Butcher

4.0

This is not just a book about Gavrilo Princip, the assassin that launched WW1. The author was a journalist during the 1990s Balkan War and knows a thing or two about that seemingly eternal tinderbox. He literally traces Gavrilo's paths in through the country, and while doing so delves into the 1st Balkan War, Austro-Hungarian rule, WW2, Tito's rule, and the massacre at Srebenica. Spolier: Butcher concludes that Princip (a Bosnian Serb) was acting for all Southern Slavs, not just the Serbs, when he assassinated Franz Ferdinand - the hope being to throw off rule by Austria-Hungary - but politics uses Princip's actions as a justification to attack Serbia and get the powder keg rolling. [Very good audio reader.]