Best known as the Prime Minister who guided Britain through World War II, Winston Churchill also played an active role in the preceding war, during which he served as his country's First Lord of the Admiralty and the leader of its aerial defense. After masterminding the disastrous Gallipoli campaign, he resigned from the government and sought to rehabilitate his reputation by serving with the army on the Western Front. Before and after World War I, Churchill wrote several books that remain popular with students and historians.

Written with his customary flair and enriched by his firsthand knowledge of events, Churchill's The World Crisis series remains the greatest history of World War I. This unabridged first volume vividly recounts the status of the world's nations at the war's outbreak, It traces the international tensions over the Balkan states that triggered the conflict as well as the arms race between the British and German navies.