A remarkable, eyewitness-based view of the outbreak of the First World War.

As war broke out in the summer of 1914, not a nation on Earth understood the magnitude of what they were about to face. To win it, whole populations had to be mobilised, and neutrality was impossible. The scale of destruction was unfathomable and no life was left unchanged.

Our understanding of this complex conflict has been coloured by a blinkered approach to popular history. It has ignored the fact that Denmark actively participated in laying minefields as soon as war began; that the first British shots were fired in West Africa, by a black man; and that the first Australian casualties occurred not at Gallipoli, but in the Pacific.

The authors of this radical new history have scoured the globe in search of an enormous quantity of fresh material. This is not history told by 'great men', this is a people's view of the war. Eyewitness accounts translated from more than a dozen languages break new ground to reveal an inclusive, touching and surprising tale of events we thought we knew.