Paul Ham talks about his latest book 1914: THE YEAR THE WORLD ENDED

Read more about 1914: THE YEAR THE WORLD ENDED: http://www.randomhouse.com.au/books/paul-ham/1914-the-year-the-world-ended-9781864711424.aspx In 1914: The Year the World Ended, award-winning historian Paul Ham tells the story of the outbreak of the Great War from German, British, French, Austria-Hungarian, Russian and Serbian perspectives.Along the way, he debunks several stubborn myths. European leaders, for example, did not stumble or 'sleepwalk' into war, as many suppose. They fully understood that a small conflict in the Balkans -- the tinderbox at the heart of the continent -- could spark a European war. They well knew what their weapons could do. Yet they carried on. They accepted -- and, in some cases, even seemed to relish -- what they saw as an inevitable clash of arms. They planned and mapped every station on the path to oblivion. These pied pipers of the apocalypse chose war in the full knowledge that millions would follow, and die, on their orders. 1914: The Year the World Ended seeks to answer the most vexing question of the 20th century: Why did European governments decide to condemn the best part of a generation of young men to the trenches and four years of slaughter, during which 8.5 million would die? Paul Ham is the author of Hiroshima Nagasaki (2011), Vietnam: The Australian War (2007) and Kokoda (2004). Vietnam won the New South Wales Premier's Prize for Australian History and was shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Prize for Non-Fiction (2008). Kokoda was shortlisted for the Walkley Award for Non-Fiction and the New South Wales Premier's Prize for Non-Fiction. His most book, Sandakan: The Untold Story of the Sandakan Death Marches, was published in 2012 and has been shortlisted for the 2013 Prime Minister's Literary Award for History. A former Sunday Times correspondent, with a Master's degree in Economic History from the London School of Economics, Paul now devotes most of his time to writing history.