Tarnished Crown

Brook-Shepherd's 12 previous books established his reputation as a historian with the talent for clarifying extremely complicated events. Here he reports little-known facts on follies and tragedies that made the First World War inevitable. He shows why only England survived as a monarchy after the ""Great War''; the others were doomed long before 1914, when the assassination of Austria's crown prince triggered the hostilities. The author describes manipulations by rulers in Serbia, Bulgaria and Montenegro, the power plays that contributed to the juggernaut. There is new light shedon Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm, who emerges here as feckless rather than determined on war as usually claimed and terribly jealous of his uncle Edward VII and cousin George V. Letters by Tsar Nicholas, foreshadowing the Romanovs' fate, are among the profuse communiques discussed that make the past immediate. Illustrations not seen by PW. (April 3)