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The Trigger
- Hunting the Assassin Who Brought the World to War
- Narrated by: Gerard Doyle
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
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Publisher's summary
On a summer morning in Sarajevo almost 100 years ago, a teenager took a pistol out of his pocket and fired not just the opening rounds of the First World War but the starting gun for modern history. By killing Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Gavrilo Princip started a cycle of events that would leave 15 million dead from fighting between 1914 and 1918 and that proved fatal for empires and a way of ruling that had held for centuries.
The Trigger tells the story of a young man who changed the world forever. It focuses on the drama of the incident itself by following Princip's journey. By retracing his steps from the feudal frontier village of his birth, through the mountains of the northern Balkans to the great plain city of Belgrade, and ultimately to Sarajevo, Tim Butcher illuminates our understanding of Princip and makes discoveries about him that have eluded historians for a hundred years. Traveling through the Balkans on Princip's trail, and drawing on his own experiences there as a war reporter during the 1990s, Butcher unravels this complex part of the world and its conflicts, and shows how the events that were sparked that day in June 1914 still have influence today. Published for the centenary of the assassination, The Trigger is a rich and timely work, part travelogue, part reportage, and part history.
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- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 20 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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An authoritative and deeply personal narrative history of the State of Israel, by one of the most influential journalists writing about the Middle East today. Not since Thomas L. Friedman's groundbreaking From Beirut to Jerusalem has a book captured the essence and the beating heart of the Middle East as keenly and dynamically as My Promised Land.
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Great book, but why the accent?
- By Stuart M. Wilder on 12-01-13
By: Ari Shavit
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The Long Hangover
- Putin’s New Russia and the Ghosts of the Past
- By: Shaun Walker
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 9 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Long Hangover, Shaun Walker provides new insight into contemporary Russia and its search for a new identity, telling the story through the country's troubled relationship with its Soviet past. Walker not only explains Vladimir Putin's goals and the government's official manipulations of history, but also focuses on ordinary Russians and their motivations. He charts how Putin raised victory in World War II to the status of a national founding myth in the search for a unifying force to heal a divided country, and shows how dangerous the ramifications of this have been.
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Fascinating and fair book on Putin's Russia
- By MyPublicName on 02-16-18
By: Shaun Walker
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North Korea Undercover
- Inside the World's Most Secret State
- By: John Sweeney
- Narrated by: Gildart Jackson
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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North Korea is like no other tyranny on Earth. Its citizens are told their home is the greatest nation in the world, and Big Brother is always watching. It is Orwell's 1984 made reality. Huge factories with no staff or electricity, hospitals with no patients, uniformed child soldiers, and the world-famous and eerily empty DMZ - the Demilitarized Zone, where North Korea ends and South Korea begins - are all framed by a relentless flow of regime propaganda from omnipresent loudspeakers. Free speech is an illusion: one word out of line, and the gulag awaits.
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Highly listenable, humorous and enlightening
- By Kevin Stokes on 09-09-15
By: John Sweeney
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Spies of No Country
- Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel
- By: Matti Friedman
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 6 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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The four spies at the center of this story were part of a ragtag unit known as the Arab Section, conceived during World War II by British spies and Jewish militia leaders in Palestine. Intended to gather intelligence and carry out sabotage and assassinations, the unit consisted of Jews who were native to the Arab world and could thus easily assume Arab identities. In 1948, with Israel's existence in the balance during the War of Independence, our spies went undercover in Beirut, where they spent the next two years operating out of a kiosk....
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Absolutely brilliant
- By David Mane on 06-23-19
By: Matti Friedman
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A Continent for the Taking
- The Tragedy and Hope of Africa
- By: Howard W. French
- Narrated by: Mirron E. Willis
- Length: 10 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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In A Continent for the Taking, Howard W. French, a veteran correspondent for The New York Times, gives a compelling firsthand account of some of Africa's most devastating recent history. While he captures the tragedies that have repeatedly befallen Africa's peoples, French also opens our eyes to the immense possibility that lies in Africa's complexity, diversity, and myriad cultural strengths.
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A story to pay your attention to
- By George on 04-30-13
By: Howard W. French
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Night Draws Near
- Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War
- By: Anthony Shadid
- Narrated by: Anthony Shadid
- Length: 6 hrs and 6 mins
- Abridged
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Determined to offer an unfiltered version of events, the Washington Post's Anthony Shadid was neither embedded with soldiers nor briefed by politicians. Because he is fluent in Arabic, Shadid, an Arab-American born and raised in Oklahoma, was able to actually disappear into the divided, dangerous worlds of Iraq. Day by day, as American dreams clashed with Arab notions of justice, he pieced together the human story of ordinary Iraqis weathering the terrible dislocations and tragedies of war.
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Too little, too late
- By Kindle Customer on 03-23-09
By: Anthony Shadid
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Like Dreamers
- The Story of the Israeli Paratroopers Who Reunited Jerusalem and Divided a Nation
- By: Yossi Klein Halevi
- Narrated by: Mel Foster
- Length: 23 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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In Like Dreamers, acclaimed journalist Yossi Klein Halevi interweaves the stories of a group of 1967 paratroopers who reunited Jerusalem, tracing the history of Israel and the divergent ideologies shaping it from the Six-Day War to the present. Following the lives of seven young members from the 55th Paratroopers Reserve Brigade, the unit responsible for restoring Jewish sovereignty to Jerusalem, Halevi reveals how this band of brothers played pivotal roles in shaping Israel's destiny long after their historic victory.
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A Clearer Understanding of the Israel
- By deborah on 06-07-14
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The Saboteur
- The Aristocrat Who Became France's Most Daring Anti-Nazi Commando
- By: Paul Kix
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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In the tradition of Agent Zigzag comes this breathtaking biography, as fast-paced and emotionally intuitive as the very best spy thrillers, which illuminates an unsung hero of the French Resistance during World War II - Robert de La Rochefoucald, an aristocrat turned anti-Nazi saboteur - and his daring exploits as a résistant trained by Britain's Special Operations Executive.
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Brave outstanding young man
- By paula wright on 06-02-20
By: Paul Kix
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Black Dragon River
- A Journey Down the Amur River at the Borderlands of Empires
- By: Dominic Ziegler
- Narrated by: Steve West
- Length: 14 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Black Dragon River is a personal journey down one of Asia's great rivers. The world's ninth largest river, the Amur serves as a large part of the border between Russia and China. As a crossroads for the great empires of Asia, this area offers journalist Dominic Ziegler a lens with which to examine the societies at Europe's only borderland with East Asia.
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INFORMATIVE
- By JK on 10-14-22
By: Dominic Ziegler
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The Lemon Tree
- By: Sandy Tolan
- Narrated by: Sandy Tolan
- Length: 11 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1967, not long after the Six-Day War, three young Arab men ventured into the town of Ramle, in what is now Jewish Israel. They were cousins, on a pilgrimage to see their childhood homes; their families had been driven out of Palestine nearly 20 years earlier. One cousin had a door slammed in his face, and another found his old house had been converted into a school. But the third, Bashir Al-Khairi, was met at the door by a young woman called Dalia, who invited them in.
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Steeping The Lemon Tree
- By Faithfull Fan on 04-11-18
By: Sandy Tolan
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The People's Republic of Amnesia
- Tiananmen Revisited
- By: Louisa Lim
- Narrated by: Louisa Lim
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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In The People's Republic of Amnesia, NPR correspondent Louisa Lim charts how the events of June 4 changed China, and how China changed the events of June 4 by rewriting its own history. Lim reveals new details about those fateful days, including how one of the country's most senior politicians lost a family member to an army bullet, as well as the inside story of the young soldiers sent to clear Tiananmen Square.
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great book and recording
- By Robert Peters on 06-14-16
By: Louisa Lim
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What listeners say about The Trigger
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Roger Perrault
- 11-06-15
Riveting tale
Tim Butcher presents a balanced portrait of the trigger for the first world war. By retracing the footsteps of the assassin as well as placing him in the context of his times and history, one cannot but get carried along. I learned a lot about Bosnia and its ensuing history. I am encouraged to read more about this period in history and to further explore Tim Butcher's other writings.
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2 people found this helpful
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- James
- 11-06-21
Worth the time
A worthwhile listen for those with an interest in the history of that part of Europe. Reviews the interlocking events of the past 150 years. Excellent narration.
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- Victor Day
- 11-09-21
Came for a Biography, received a Journey!
Expected to hear a biography on one of histories great mysterious figures but instead Tim Butcher provides an amazing journey through a haunted land. Great story that follows the path of Princip from home to final resting place. Mr. Doyle does an excellent job.
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- Grace M-T
- 07-07-24
Riveting but unconvincing
I loved the way the author wove together early and late 20th century history. But as we got to the end—for he really does take you along on this journey—his assertions that Gavrilo Princip was was really truly just trying to bring everyone together rang hollow. Ditto for his obvious sympathies for the local Muslims and their Arab allies in the Bosnian War. The author’s bias IS part of the books charm but read carefully
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- Dan
- 05-15-15
Good historical account, but just on the assassin
Kind of dry. It's a hard read, but interesting if you want the history on the assassin who started everything.
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1 person found this helpful
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I liked this book
A while ago, I bought an audiobook that meticulously detailed every event of the Italian theater of war in World War 2. I cannot remember one, lasting image or fact from that book. So, what you have here is a non-typical book about a historical figure- Gav Principe. It's more of a travelogue and stream-of-consciousness with historical facts thrown in. In the beginning, I was kind of thrown off but I am glad I stuck with it. Personally, I retain knowledge better from a book like this. I found it to be very rich. And since I was not born in the UK, I found the author's musings about the first world war and its effects on his home town and family rather interested. If you want a straightforward history book about the assasin, don't get this. But I liked the book very much and almost anything Gerard Doyle turns into gold anyway.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Kendra
- 07-08-14
Good, but not what I was looking for
This book is not what I thought it was going to be. From the title, I assumed that there was some sort of hunt after Gavrilo Princip. I was expecting a carefully plotted assassination, followed by a daring escape and concluding with some brilliant detective work to bring the man to justice. In reality Gavrilo is caught immediately. There is no hunt. Instead the author uses the word hunt as a metaphor for his journey to understanding about Gavrilo Princep and modern Bosnia. I think that more than half of the history in this book has nothing to do with WWI, or Gavrilo, and instead is more about the 1990s and the civil war between the Bosnian Serbs, Bosnian Croats, and Bosnian Muslims. If you are looking for a book about those things this is the book for you; it is well written with good emotion and many interesting insights. The narration went unnoticed, which is a compliment. In the end the author does tie everything back to Gavrilo Princip, which was fascinating, but on the whole this is not the book I was looking for.
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7 people found this helpful