The Trigger: Hunting the Assassin Who Brought the World to War

From the author of Blood River: "A splendid book, part memoir, part history," about the teenager who killed Archduke Ferdinand and sparked WWI (Norman Stone, author of World War One).

Sarajevo, 1914. On a June morning, nineteen-year-old Gavrilo Princip drew a pistol from his pocket and fired the first shot of the First World War, killing the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Princip then launched a series of events that would transform the world forever.

Retracing Princip's steps from the feudal frontier village of his birth to the city of Belgrade and ultimately Sarajevo, journalist and bestselling author Tim Butcher discovers details about the young assassin that have eluded historians for a century. Drawing on his own experiences in the Balkans covering the Bosnian War in the 1990s, Butcher also unravels the complexities and conflicts of this part of the world, showing how the events of that day in 1914 still have influence today.

"Devastating yet strangely exhilarating." --Publishers Weekly

"Evocative and moving . . . [Butcher] reveals an intelligent and determined South Slav patriot who gave his life for the cause." --Saul David, author of Military Blunders

"Well-researched history . . . indelible personal recollections of the Bosnian war . . . piquant vignettes of traversing rural Bosnia on foot . . . Consistently appetizing and highly controversial." --Dervla Murphy, author of Full Tilt

"A great book . . . to be recommended to professional and amateur historians alike." --General Sir David Richards, former chief of the British Defense Staff