具体描述
Europe's Last Summer: Who Started the Great War in 1914?(Hardcover) 内容提要：
Susan Sinclair has it all: great job, great apartment - and on some days she even manages great hair. She doesn't have a great man, but she's far too successful to have time for one. Then she gets a frantic summons to return to where it all began - Copper Creek, her home in Michigan - only to discover that her grown daughter has followed in her not-so-proud footsteps by getting pregnant without getting married and her widowed mom seems to be scandalously juggling more men then she can count. And, worst of all, he's still there - Jon Laker - still the man most likely to drive her crazy. So she marches into his business and declares she's there to discuss their daughter - and nothing else. After all, she made her choices a long time ago. But hours later - after not doing very much talking at all - Susan realizes that seeing Jon has turned her well-ordered world upside down.
作者简介
From Publishers Weekly
The world of nihilistic terrorist conspiracy, paranoid empires and diplomatic opportunism that Fromkin (In the Time of the Americans) describes in this terrific account of WWI's underpinnings will seem eerily familiar to 21st-century denizens. Fromkin allies a direct, compulsively readable style with a daunting command of sources old and new, unrolling a complex skein of events with assurance and wit and dispatching numerous conventional wisdoms. The view (most influentially stated in Barbara Tuchman's Vietnam-era Guns of August), that the war, unwanted by all, was the result of an unfortunate series of accidents, is neutralized by the clearly presented evidence of careful premeditation and planning on the part of Germany and Austro-Hungary, as is the more recent assertion of Niall Ferguson's The Pity of War that if only the rest of Europe had acceded to Germany's imperial ambitions, the whole business might have been avoided. The enormity of the horrors unleashed in that fateful summer—and the culpability of all sides in exacerbating them—has made laying blame for the war squarely at the foot of the German and Austrian leadership unfashionable, but the evidence assembled by Fromkin is strong. His pictures of a Germany feeling itself (without real cause) surrounded, convinced of an imminent national demise from which only war could save it and of the Kafkaesque Austro-Hungarian empire lurching toward Armageddon are pitiless and sharp. Readers who ate up Margaret MacMillan's account of the war's aftermath, in Paris 1919, shouldn't miss this equally accomplished chronicle of its beginning.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Fromkin's answer to the question posed in his subtitle is succinct: Helmuth von Moltke, imperial Germany's army chief in 1914. In his clearly delineated argument, Fromkin addresses alternative theories about the cause of World War I, but he returns to the decision chain of a small number of officials in Berlin and Vienna. Their destruction of key evidence hampers the precise reconstruction of their actions as does, Fromkin maintains, historians' confusion about what the Germans were licensing in agreeing to whatever chastisement Vienna decided to deliver upon Serbia, on the pretext of avenging the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. In contrast to theorists of rigid alliances, to whom the notorious "blank check" initiated events almost beyond human control, Fromkin arraigns the actions of Moltke and his colleagues, especially in late July 1914, when the procrastinating Austrians had yet to crush Serbia in war, as Moltke expected. Hijacking the bollixed-up situation, he overrode Kaiser Wilhelm II's resistance, Fromkin concludes, to a deliberate instigation of a second war against Russia and France. The boldness of Fromkin's argument is enough to warrant attention, but his fluidity of expression guarantees a large audience for this book. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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从结构上看，这本书的章节划分非常巧妙，采用了多重视角的切换，像是一部立体电影，让你从不同人物的眼睛里审视同一个事件。这种叙事策略的运用，极大地丰富了故事的层次感，避免了单一视角的局限性。比如，某个关键转折点，通过一个局外人的视角来描述时，显得平静而荒谬；而通过亲历者的视角来描绘时，则充满了绝望和无助。作者对于不同阶层和不同地域人物语言习惯的把握，达到了令人惊叹的逼真程度，这为构建一个可信的历史场景提供了坚实的基础。我注意到，书中有一些反复出现的象征符号，它们贯穿始终，为原本复杂的情节线索提供了一种隐晦的指引，为热衷于文本解读的读者提供了丰富的挖掘空间。它成功地做到了既有历史的厚重感，又不失叙事的流畅性，读起来虽然需要集中注意力，但绝不会感到枯燥。相反，每一次视角的转换都像是一次新的发现，让人忍不住想知道“接下来其他人会怎么看这件事？”
评分这本书给我的整体感受是压抑而又充满力量的。它没有提供廉价的希望或逃避的出口，而是直面了人性的弱点和历史的残酷性。作者对于“等待”这一主题的描绘尤其深刻，那种漫长、煎熬的等待，不仅是物理上的时间流逝，更是精神上对未知的恐惧和对奇迹的微弱期盼的拉扯。这种张力贯穿全书，像一根紧绷的弦，让人既感到窒息，又忍不住想知道它何时会断裂。书中对社会结构和权力运作的剖析，尖锐而透彻，揭示了看似稳定表象下的脆弱和虚伪。阅读过程更像是一次对历史现场的近距离探访，作者仿佛带着你穿梭于那些重要的会议室和秘密的角落，让你亲耳听到那些决定命运的低语。虽然阅读过程可能带来一些情感上的消耗，但正是这种真实感，赋予了这部作品持久的价值。它不是让你读完后轻松地放下，而是会像一块石头一样，沉甸甸地留在你的记忆深处，不断引起回响。
评分这本书的叙事节奏像是一场精心编排的交响乐，开场时铺陈的细节虽然缓慢，却如同泛黄的老照片般，带着一种独特的历史质感，让人沉浸其中。作者对于人物内心世界的刻画极为细腻，那些在时代洪流中挣扎的小人物，他们的喜怒哀乐、恐惧与希望，都被赋予了饱满的生命力。我尤其欣赏作者对环境氛围的营造，那种弥漫在字里行间的紧张与不安，即使是晴朗的日子，也仿佛能感受到远方即将到来的风暴的预兆。书中的对话设计堪称一绝，看似日常的交流，实则暗藏着权力的博弈和个人命运的转折点，需要读者细细品味才能领会其深层含义。它并非一本快餐式的读物，更像是一幅需要驻足凝视才能领略全貌的油画，每一笔触都充满了深思熟虑的考量。初读时可能会觉得信息量较大，需要一些耐心去梳理人物关系和历史背景，但一旦进入状态，那种被故事完全吞噬的感觉是极其过瘾的。整体而言，它成功地捕捉了特定历史时期那种微妙的、山雨欲来的情绪张力。
评分这是一部充满哲思的作品，它超越了单纯的历史记录范畴，更像是一场关于时间、选择与责任的深刻对话。书中对“必然性”和“偶然性”的探讨尤为引人深思：究竟是时代的大势裹挟着个体前行，还是无数个体的微小选择共同铸就了历史的走向？作者似乎并不急于给出明确的答案，而是将这个难题抛给了读者，让你在合上书本后依然久久不能释怀。我非常欣赏作者在处理复杂道德困境时的平衡感，没有简单地将角色划分为绝对的好人或坏蛋，每个人物都有其自身的逻辑和不得已的苦衷。这种对人性的灰色地带的拥抱，使得故事更具现实感和力量。从排版和用词上看，这本书也体现出一种老派的匠人精神，文字打磨得干净利落，没有一丝多余的赘述，每一个形容词都用在了刀刃上。对于追求文学深度和思想启迪的读者来说，这是一次不容错过的阅读体验。
评分这本书的文笔有一种冰冷而精确的美感，仿佛是出自一位老练的外科医生之手，对人类行为进行着冷静而无情的剖析。作者擅长使用并置的技巧，将宏大的历史叙事与微观的个体经历并置，从而产生一种强烈的对照效果，让读者在理解时代悲剧的同时，也能感受到个体命运的渺小与坚韧。我特别喜欢其中关于“记忆的不可靠性”的探讨，叙述者似乎总是在历史的迷雾中寻找一个确凿的锚点，但最终发现，所有记录都带有主观的滤镜。这种对真相的探寻过程本身，构成了叙事结构中一个引人入胜的支柱。行文风格上，它避免了煽情和廉价的戏剧化处理，而是通过克制的情感表达，反而营造出一种更深沉的震撼力。阅读过程中，我常常需要停下来，反复咀嚼某些段落，因为它们所揭示的人性幽暗面，往往直指人心最脆弱的部分。这绝对是一部需要沉下心来阅读的严肃文学作品，它的价值在于持久的回味，而非一时的冲击。
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