content: This book has excellent military analysis and I can see why it has many admirers. However, I purchased it in order to learn more about the origins of World War I and was profoundly disappointed. The analysis is quite limited and dominated by a heavy anti-German bias. Of course all works of history will show the author's bias to some degree, but parts of this book read like a melodrama, with Germany as the villain and Belgium as the hero.Studying the start of World War I gives us an opportunity to learn better ways of preventing future catastrophic wars. When the analysis of German war aims relies on "the hatred of a barbaric culture against anything civilized," that opportunity is lost.