Includes bibliographical references and index.

Pt. 1. July 1914: into the abyss -- June 28: the black hand descends (The Serbs) -- Never again (The Hapsburgs) -- Setting fire to Europe (The Hohenzollerns) -- July 25 to 28: secrets and lies (The Romanovs) -- July 29 to 31: fear is a bad counselor (The Ottoman Turks) -- Saturday, August 1: Leaping into the dark -- pt. 2. August-December 1914: Racing to Deadlock -- The iron dice roll (Paris in 1914) -- First blood (London 1914) -- A perfect balance (The junkers) -- To the Marne (The French commanders) -- Back from the Marne (The British Commanders) -- Flanders fields -- pt. 3. 1915: A zero-sum game -- The search for elsewhere (The machinery of death) -- The Dardanelles (The sea war) -- Ypres again (Troglodytes) -- Gallipoli (An infinite appetite for shells) -- The ground shifts (Genocide) -- Gallipoli again, and Poland, and ... -- pt. 4. 1916: bleeding to death -- Verdun: preparation (Old wounds unhealed) -- Verdun: execution (The living dead) -- Verdun metastasizes (Airships and landships) -- Maelstrom (The Jews of Germany) -- The Somme (Farewells, and an arrival at the top) -- Exhaustion -- pt. 5. 1917: things fall apart -- Turnips and submarines (Consuming the future) -- A new defense, and a new offense (Hearts and minds) -- Revolution and intervention (The Cossacks) -- The Nivelle offensive (The war and poetry) -- Wars without guns (Enter the tiger) -- Passchendaele -- pt. 6. 1918: The last throw of the dice -- Going for broke (Kaiser Wilhelm II) -- Entangling misalliances (Lawrence of Arabia) -- Michael (Ludendorff) -- An impossibly complex game (The women) -- The black day of the German army (The gardeners of Salonika) -- The sign of the defeated -- Postwar: the fate of men and nations.