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Misfire is an interesting and valuable book... a rewarding read, richly detailed, well researched and argued. * Gary Sheffield, The Critic * Miller-Melamed's compelling account of the assassination at Sarajevo in 1914 is a welcome addition to the literature on the outbreak of the Great War. Turning myth into history, Miller shows that the men responsible for the outbreak of war were not assassins, but prime ministers, foreign ministers, and generals who turned one crime into the justification for another, greater, crime we know as the First World War. * Jay Winter, Yale University * Paul Miller-Melamed asks why Gavrilo Princip is mythologized as a pivotal figure in world history when it was the actions of others which brought about war in 1914. This fresh, engaging retelling of a familiar story highlights the extent and longevity of the 'Sarajevo myths' and paints a vivid portray of the assassin, his victims, and their different, yet similar, worlds which collided on 28 June 1914 * Annika Mombauer, The Open University * The story of the assassination of Franz-Ferdinand has been so often told that most now assume to know what 'Sarajevo, 1914' was and meant. Miller-Melamed's compelling narrative, steeped in his masterful and nuanced command of the scholarly literature, show how little those events are understood to this day. Misfire's retelling shows the characters in this plot should not be dismissed as bit-part actors in the wider drama of the First World War. Neither should the Balkans be treated as a peripheral backwater of Europe when its politics and peoples played a critical role in shaping modern Europe as we know it. Misfire is a remarkable demonstration of the craft of historical writing. Anyone with a keen interest in history, not merely World War I historians, will thoroughly enjoy this book and learn a great deal from it. * Pierre Purseigle, University of Warwick * An engrossing examination of how World War I began, how it is remembered, and the differences between the two, Misfire does not complicate the story of World War I's origins; rather, it serves as a reminder that history is always more complicated than its mythmakers and storytellers suggest. * Eileen Gonzalez, Foreword Reviews *

Miller-Melamed's compelling account of the assassination at Sarajevo in 1914 is a welcome addition to the literature on the outbreak of the Great War. Turning myth into history, Miller shows that the men responsible for the outbreak of war were not assassins, but prime ministers, foreign ministers, and generals who turned one crime into the justification for another, greater, crime we know as the First World War. * Jay Winter, Yale University * Paul Miller-Melamed asks why Gavrilo Princip is mythologized as a pivotal figure in world history when it was the actions of others which brought about war in 1914. This fresh, engaging retelling of a familiar story highlights the extent and longevity of the 'Sarajevo myths' and paints a vivid portray of the assassin, his victims, and their different, yet similar, worlds which collided on 28 June 1914 * Annika Mombauer, The Open University * The story of the assassination of Franz-Ferdinand has been so often told that most now assume to know what 'Sarajevo, 1914' was and meant. Miller-Melamed's compelling narrative, steeped in his masterful and nuanced command of the scholarly literature, show how little those events are understood to this day. Misfire's retelling shows the characters in this plot should not be dismissed as bit-part actors in the wider drama of the First World War. Neither should the Balkans be treated as a peripheral backwater of Europe when its politics and peoples played a critical role in shaping modern Europe as we know it. Misfire is a remarkable demonstration of the craft of historical writing. Anyone with a keen interest in history, not merely World War I historians, will thoroughly enjoy this book and learn a great deal from it. * Pierre Purseigle, University of Warwick *

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Paul Miller-Melamed teaches history at the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin in Poland and McDaniel College in the United States. He is the author of From Revolutionaries to Citizens: Antimilitarism in France, 1870-1914 and the co-editor of Embers of Empire: Continuity and Rupture in the Habsburg Successor States after 1914.

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