Tim Butcher cut his teeth as a war correspondent in the Bosnian war in the 1990s, watching former neighbours tear each other to pieces and commit terrible atrocities in the name of religion and nationalism. Twenty-odd years later, he set off across the same ground to retrace the steps and fathom the motives of Gavro Princip, the nineteen year old assassin whose murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was the spark for World War I. His research provides new insights into the family and social background of the enigmatic Princip, and simultaneously his travels and encounters with Muslim, Serb and Croat across Bosnia reveal the sufferings of the people and the present aftermath of the Bosnian war, still much divided but governed by the Dayton Accords, imposed after NATO intervention. Its a well written book, and Butcher gives a real flavour of the country and its people, getting to grips with the shadowy Princip. An interesting aside among the military oriented books on the First World War.