The Month That Changed the World: July 1914, by Gordon Martel. 2014.
Gordon Martel, in his The Month That Changed the World: July 1914, has set out a chronological narrative of the actions taken by European government officials, largely those in the foreign ministries of the Great Powers, in the last week of prior to the outbreak of the Great War. In a sense, Martel's book is Luigi Albertini (The Origins of the War of 1914) writ small. Martel avoids assigning guilt for the war, and eschews judging the decisions of his characters. In his last chapter, he castigates those historians who explore the "what ifs" of 1914, decisions that if made differently may have avoided war.
Martel's book strikes me as incomplete. In focusing on the senior foreign ministry officials and heads of state, he gives the impression that foreign policy is made in a vacuum occupied solely by those gentlemen. More serious is his exclusion of any serious investigation of why Vienna persisted in its assumption that Russia would not take military action against Austria-Hungary, right up through Russian mobilization and Germany's declaration of war against Russia (even before Vienna had so declared). A key figure in that blindness is the Austrian military Chief of Staff Conrad. Perhaps as Conrad is not a diplomat, Martel figured he was not part of his thesis.
The biggest weakness is the book's lack of analysis, of judgment. Martel has written another book, The Origins of the First World War (1987), and perhaps that book would be more satisfactory. As it is, The Month That Changed the World: July 1914 feels like research notes, carefully arranged in chronological order.
I do recommend Clark's The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914.
