Touched off by a terrorist act in Bosnia and spreading all too quickly beyond the expectations of those who were involved, World War I was an unprecedented catastrophe with a ghastly cost. After this first "total war" - the first conflict involving entire societies mobilized to wage unrestrained war, devoting all their wealth, industries, institutions, and the lives of their citizens to win victory at any price - the world itself would never be the same.

These 36 riveting half-hour lectures cut through the tangle of historical data to uncover the patterns that make sense of complex events. Whereas most World War I narratives focus on the Western Front in France and Flanders, with its mazelike trenches, gas attacks, constant shelling, assaults "over the top" into withering machine gun fire, and duels of dog-fighting aviators in the sky, Professor Liulevicius also devotes great attention to other important arenas, including the Eastern Front, the Southern Fronts, the War at Sea, the Arab Revolt, the Communist Revolution, the Armenian Massacre, the Spanish Influenza, and more.

Professor Liulevicius combines chronological and thematic approaches for a sweeping survey of World War I's many dimensions. He explores themes such as the surprising eagerness of all parties to plunge into mutual slaughter, the unexpected endurance of societies undergoing total war, the radically different hopes and hatreds that the war evoked, with remarkable contrasts between western and eastern Europe, the meanings that the different sides ascribed to the war, and the role of various ideologies in the war's course and conduct.