The “Cousins War”, that wrecked the civilization of Europe. Gave rise to Bolshevik Russia and eventually Nazi Germany.
Barbara Tuchman’s ‘The Guns of August’ is a great book on WWI. I read Keegan’s ‘The First World War’ as well.
One theme you often see is the difficulty of figuring out why Germany and Austria decided to go to war over the assassination.
I guess a land grab for the disintegrating Ottoman Empire makes as much sense as anything else.
Austria it’s easy to see, the assassination of the Archduke by the Serbian terrorist group (Which had Serbian Intel connections!).
To me the three nations that absolutely wanted war was Serbia, Austro-Hungary (Wanted “limited” war against Serbia!) and France (Revenge for the Franco-Prussian War & recovery of Alsace-Loraine!). The rest of them just stumbled into it to a lesser or greater degree! The two nations that had the least reasons to get involved was UK & us!