The sick man of Europe -- Between blunder and stupidity -- The Balkan Wars -- Murder in Sarajevo -- The streamroller -- Misfits -- Krásnik -- Komarów -- Lemberg and Rawa-Ruska -- Death on the Drina -- Warsaw -- The thin gray line -- Serbian jubilee -- Snowmen

"The Austro-Hungarian army that marched east and south to confront the Russians and Serbs in the opening campaigns of World War I had a glorious past but a pitiful present. Speaking a mystifying array of languages and lugging outdated weapons, the Austrian troops were hopelessly unprepared for the industrialized warfare that would shortly consume Europe. As ... historian Geoffrey Wawro explains in [this book], the doomed Austrian conscripts were an unfortunate microcosm of the Austro-Hungarian Empire itself--both equally ripe for destruction"--