Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914 Reviews
Hailed as 'excellent' by Andrew Marr, Max's new book Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914, published on 12th September, is now in its fifth week in the Sunday Times top ten non-fiction bestsellers. Among the latest reviewers, Nigel Jones writes in the Sunday Telegraph's Book Of The Week feature: 'This is a magnificent and deeply moving book, and with Max Hastings as our guide we are in the hands of a master'. Hew Strachan in the New York Times writes that Barbara Tuchman's legendary best-seller The Guns of August 'has been supplanted'. Max Boot in the New York Times Book Review describes the book as 'excellent', concluding 'Hastings brilliants shows how … World War I came to assume the dispiriting and bloody form it would hold for the next four years'. America's Library Journal says Catastrophe represents 'an ideal into World War I history'.

'Like one of Field Marshal Haig's family whiskies, Max Hastings is a dram that steadily improves with age … His position as Britain's leading military historian is now unassailable … In this enormously impressive new book, Hastings effortlessly masters the complex lead-up to and opening weeks of the First World War … [He] is as magisterial as we would expect … This is a magnificent and deeply moving book, and with Max Hastings as our guide we are in the hands of a master' Nigel Jones, Telegraph