The Trigger, Tim Butcher
The Trigger, Tim Butcher
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The Trigger
Hunting the Assassin Who Brought the World to War

Author: Tim Butcher

Narrator: Gerard Doyle

Unabridged: 9 hr 32 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 06/12/2014


Synopsis

On a summer morning in Sarajevo almost a hundred years ago, a teenager took a pistol out of his pocket and fired not just the opening rounds of the First World War but the starting gun for modern history. By killing Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Gavrilo Princip started a cycle of events that would leave 15 million dead from fighting between 1914 and 1918 and that proved fatal for empires and a way of ruling that had held for centuries.

The Trigger tells the story of a young man who changed the world forever. It focuses on the drama of the incident itself by following Princip's journey. By retracing his steps from the feudal frontier village of his birth, through the mountains of the northern Balkans to the great plain city of Belgrade, and ultimately to Sarajevo, Tim Butcher illuminates our understanding of Princip and makes discoveries about him that have eluded historians for a hundred years. Traveling through the Balkans on Princip's trail, and drawing on his own experiences there as a war reporter during the 1990s, Butcher unravels this complex part of the world and its conflicts, and shows how the events that were sparked that day in June 1914 still have influence today. Published for the centenary of the assassination, The Trigger is a rich and timely work, part travelogue, part reportage, and part history.

About Tim Butcher

Tim Butcher is a bestselling author and explorer whose books blend history with travel. His first book, Blood River, was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize, and his second, Chasing the Devil, was longlisted for the Orwell Prize. Tim is a former foreign correspondent for the Daily Telegraph. He lives in Cape Town with his family.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Anthony on June 25, 2023

Wanderlust Journalism. Tim Butcher is an English journalist, who like so many from the United Kingdom has a relative who fought in the First World War, sadly in the case of his great uncle he perished. For me, my grandfather’s older brother was captured on the Somme and this survived the slaughter.......more

Goodreads review by Mike on December 05, 2017

I wasn’t especially interested in the subject of this book, Gavrilo Princip, to begin with; I read it because I had been impressed by one of Tim Butcher’s earlier books, Blood River, an exciting and well-written account of a long and dangerous journey through Central Africa. Like Blood River, The Tr......more

Goodreads review by Nigeyb on August 18, 2015

A concise, compelling, accessible book that is part history, part travelogue, part memoir and wholly unmissable A fascinating investigation into the life and times of Gavrilo Princip, the Serbian student who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, and which was the catalyst for Wor......more

Goodreads review by Cold War Conversations Podcast on September 24, 2014

An excellent multi layered history/travelogue/personal story tracing the journey of Gavrilo Princip from remote Bosnian village to initiator of World War 1. Tim Butcher brings alive the story of Gavrilo Princip by physically following the young Bosnian Serb's journey from his remote village to the st......more