The Trigger: Hunting the Assassin Who Brought the World to War

<b>"The driver's decision to turn into Franz Joseph Street and not continue down the Appel Quay, as had been decided back at the town hall, was a stroke of assassin's luck for [Gavrilo] Princip. When General Potiorek spotted what was happening he shouted at the driver, ordering him immediately to stop and reverse back out onto the Appel Quay. Instead of his target speeding past, Princip saw the Archduke [Franz Ferdinand] slow right in front of him only a few feet away - the gallant count, so willing to protect the life of his liege, on the running board on the other side of the car. For the instant it took the driver to find reverse, the Archduke was a sitting duck. Princip took the Browning pistol in his hand, stepped forward from among the crowd on the pavement next to the entrance of the cafe and fired..."</b><br />- Tim Butcher, <i>The Trigger: Hunting the Assassin Who Brought the World to War</i><br /><br />Even if you know nothing (or practically nothing) else about World War I, you probably know that it started with the assassination of Austro-Hungarian heir Franz Ferdinand in the city of Sarajevo. At least, that's about as much as I knew, when I started my World War I crash course several years ago. Exactly why this happened - why the murder of an unloved Austrian archduke in a Bosnian city by a Serbian nationalist caused Germany to invade Belgium to get at France in order to defend themselves against Russia - is a far more complicated story.<br /><br />Franz Ferdinand's death precipitated the so-called July Crisis of 1914, a period of diplomatic maneuvering between Austria-Hungary, Serbia, Germany, Russia, France, and Great Britain that ultimately ended with the "Guns of August" and one of the bloodiest, most inexplicable wars in human history. <br /><br />There are a lot of books about the July Crisis, even more so during the centenary commemorations. But even the most detailed volumes I've read usually relegate the actual Sarajevo assassination on June 28, 1914, to a page or two. The assassin himself, a nineteen year-old Bosnian Serb named Gavrilo Princip, is usually treated as little better than a footnote. <br /><br />When I came across Tim Butcher's <i>The Trigger: Hunting the Assassin Who Brought the World to War</i>, it caught my eye for precisely this reason. I wanted to read about the man who unwittingly struck the match that set the world aflame, the man who is usually given a couple sentences at the start of any World War I history, before receding into the dustbin. <br /><br />Butcher's account is not a standard biography. Rather, it is an entry into the genre I call Historical Road Trips, a hybrid literary form that combines elements of travelogue, memoir, and history. Well known authors who've contributed to this genre include Sarah Vowell (<i>Assassination Vacation</i>) and Tony Horowitz (<i>Confederates in the Attic</i>). <br /><br />I didn't know this when I purchased <i>The Trigger</i>, for the reason that Amazon's one-click shopping allows me to make impulse buys without undergoing any sort of decision-making process. When I found out, however, I wasn't bothered. I have a great affinity for Historical Road Trips, mainly because I've made so many myself. (Let me tell you about the time I dragged my wife and six-month old daughter to the Battle of Cowpens. In July! In a Subaru! We can all laugh now, about how a Park Ranger had to find me and inform me of a cataclysmic diaper blowout... But at the time...)<br /><br />Butcher's style will be quite familiar to anyone who's read Vowell or Horowitz. He sets out to follow Princip's path to political murder by literally following his path. He begins in the tiny town of Obljaj in present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina, where Princip was born. He meets with Princip's family, and engages in a lengthy conversation with them about their illustrious/infamous ancestor. Afterwards, he sets off on foot with his Bosnian friend Arnie to recreate Princip's overland journey to Sarajevo. Along the way Butcher dodges landmines from the Balkan Wars, talks to a couple fishermen, and eats wild mushrooms. <br /><br />Butcher writes in a journalistic style, which makes sense, since he was a journalist and war correspondent for <i>The Daily Telegraph</i>. His prose is engaging and detailed and <i>The Trigger</i> is an effortless read. <br /><br />The problem, for me, is that Butcher doesn't do a great job "hunting the assassin." For long stretches of the book, Princip seems to disappear completely. This might be a function of reality. Princip is an elusive figure. He was unheralded and unknown before his historical moment, and he died in prison, forgotten in the hurricane of blood and destruction he'd set in motion. In other words, he didn't leave much of a paper trail. <br /><br />Butcher does the best he can. He clearly searches out every scrap of information about Princip, and extrapolates as much as he can from the surviving documentation. He pores, for instance, over extant school records that show a young Princip first succeeding in school in Sarajevo, and later letting his grades slip as he begins his involvement in the Young Bosnia movement. <br /><br />Despite this, there isn't enough Princip to fill a book, so Butcher resorts to telling - essentially - two parallel stories. The first is his pursuit of Princip; the second is Butcher's own experiences as a correspondent during the Balkan Wars of the 1990s. <br /><br />Frankly, I did not get a lot of mileage from the latter. I respect Butcher's work as a war correspondent, including the dangers he faced, but if I wanted to read all about his experiences I would have sought that out separately. It's just filler here, and borderline navel gazing. There are, obviously, echoes of the Serbian role in the Great War in the Balkan Wars nearly 80 years later. Serbian nationalism and ambition were at work in both. But Butcher never tied the two threads together for me in a meaningful way. Strangely, he espouses sympathy for Princip and his pro-Serbian beliefs in 1914, while disdaining the ruthlessness of the Serbs in the 1990s. (Butcher visits a massacre site from the Balkan Wars while trailing Princip's wispy spirit). <br /><br />I liked this book a fair amount, but am far from loving it. It falls far short of the other Historical Road Trip books I've read. Butcher checks all the boxes by visiting the sites, sifting through the archives, and interviewing people along the way. Unfortunately, none of it was made memorable. <i>The Trigger</i> is far too solemn, even given its subject matter. Sarah Vowell and Tony Horowitz also tackle grim subjects, but they do it with an eye for the absurd, the humorous, the enlightening. I didn't find that here. <br /><br />There is, for example, a set piece in which Butcher goes to Banja Luka to watch the band Franz Ferdinand play a concert. Butcher clearly recognized the delicious preposterousness of an English band named for a dead Austrian heir rocking out in a Bosnian town. Butcher goes to the show, talks to the band and...that's it. The set piece fizzles out into nothing.<br /><br />Look, I'm not here to tell you that World War I historiography needs to be funnier. That's not my line. In fact, I tried out a couple jokes, just to be sure. Sample: Knock-knock. Who's there? The Battle of the Somme. The Battle of the Somme who? A million dead soldiers. <br /><br />It doesn't work on any level. <br /><br />Still, a hundred years later, trying to illuminate the contours of a ghost, there is no need to be overly funereal. <i>The Trigger</i> really could have used an infusion of wit. (Especially given the fact that trying to recapture a person's life by actually visiting the landmarks of his life is a quixotic notion. At best it is an earnest attempt to capture something ineffable from the past; at worst it's just an excuse to write a book). <br /><br />Amidst the extraneous details and long digressions, <i>The Trigger</i> has things to teach you about Gavrilo Princip. I appreciated that, even if I could have learned them in a more straightforward manner. In the end, we don't have a lot of concrete information about the assassin. There are the memories of his family, the route of his travels, his grades from school, an interview with a psychiatrist while in prison. There is his photograph, with his eternally haunted eyes. All of this is of interest mainly to a serious World War I buff. For others, it is enough to know that on June 28, 1914 he fired two shots at a moving car, killed two people, and ended up dying of tuberculosis in prison while the rest of the world tore itself to pieces.<br /><br />It is enough for us to wonder: What was he thinking about, at the end?

Really not for me. I felt deceived by the title which suggests an examination of the life of Gavrilo Princip who assassinated Arch-duke Ferdinand leading to the outbreak of the First World War. I also expected some discussion of Serbian nationalism. There is some of that in this book - but in the main it is a travelogue of the author in the former Yugoslavia which I was not that interested in. Much of this was focused on personal experiences of the author.<br /><br />I have read <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/1920893.Hearts_Grown_Brutal_Sagas_of_Sarajevo" title="Hearts Grown Brutal Sagas of Sarajevo by Roger Cohen" rel="noopener">Hearts Grown Brutal: Sagas of Sarajevo</a> which is superior journalism to what is in this book.

Wanderlust Journalism. <br /><br />Tim Butcher is an English journalist, who like so many from the United Kingdom has a relative who fought in the First World War, sadly in the case of his great uncle he perished. For me, my grandfather’s older brother was captured on the Somme and this survived the slaughter. Butcher, was born into a country and a century reflective of this great event which changed the course of history and as such, has thought much about the Great War. This book explores the catalyst to that colossus episode in our story, Gavrilo (Bosnian for Gabriel) Princip. Butcher wants to discover who this young peasant from a small village in Bosnia was and how he came to orchestrate one of the most famous events in human history.<br /><br />This is a history book that meets travel writing. Butcher is almost like an archaeologist using text and then going into the field to uncover the artefacts, to piece together the whole story. There are some amazing finds which occur in this story. Butcher actually meets the Princip clan (Princip means Prince - it was not the original family surname and was given to his great grandfather, they were however far from princely), descents of his relations and people alive today who knew his parents (who’s father died in 1941 and mother 1945!). They show Butcher the town, where the Princip house once stood, in a landscape much changed by successive wars. Princip’s parents much knew the seemingly infinite suffering his actions unleashed. Another amazing addition is that Butcher actually meets the UK band Franz Ferdinand who were in consent in Bosnia at the time and explain the origins of their name, again through that domineering event of WWI on British lives.<br /><br />I think that Butcher does a decent enough job in showing everything there is to know about Princip from origins to death by skeletal tuberculosis in a Austro-Hungarian prison in 1918. He was only 23 at the age of his death and by that time had been incarcerated for nearly for 4 years. His life was unremarkable other than the assassination. He was originally an A-grade student, who got racialised in this melting point of extremists from across Europe. He travelled across Austria-Hungary, as a citizen he was easily able to do this. He never knew a woman, but did exchange love letters with one, but did not want to say anymore about that upon his capture.<br /><br /> Butcher goes on this trail in modern Bosnian, as I said above, racked by WWII, years of communism and then civil war. Much has changed, but if you look closely enough the world of Princip can be seen. This is very interesting, his home, family, education and radicalisation can be unpicked. In being at these locations and at the site where those two famous shots were fired can really bring history to life. Butcher is perhaps one of the few that can really achieve this, having Bosnian contacts though his work as a journalist in the civil war of the 1990s and I appreciate that. <br /><br />A good edition to anyone’s WWI collection as Princip is of course a key player, much as Haig, Joffre or TE Lawerence are and as such requires a review. Unfortunately there isn’t a whole lot to say about Princip, but I did enjoy following Butcher on the journey, the book moves well and reads like a newspaper or National Geographic article and as such the writing is of highly journalistic quality.

I wasn’t especially interested in the subject of this book, Gavrilo Princip, to begin with; I read it because I had been impressed by one of Tim Butcher’s earlier books, <i>Blood River</i>, an exciting and well-written account of a long and dangerous journey through Central Africa. Like <i>Blood River</i>, <i>The Trigger</i> is a mixture of history, travelogue and journalism – a format Butcher does very well. It is just as good as <i>Blood River</i>, and I ended up being very interested in Princip indeed.<br /><br />The outline of the book is thus: In the early 1990s Butcher is a young correspondent in the Balkans, covering the conflict for Britain’s <i>Telegraph</i> newspaper. In Sarajevo he finds people using a small building as a toilet, and is bemused to find that it is the mausoleum of Princip, whose assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in the city led to the First World War. Butcher moves on but does not forget this odd sight, and in 2012 he resolves to walk across Bosnia and Serbia in Princip’s footsteps. Butcher wants to see if the journey would illuminate the chain of events that had led not only to that war but to the one he covered 80 years later. <br /><br />In 1907 the 13-year-old Princip walked most of the way from his home in Western Bosnia to Sarajevo to get an education. Later, as a radicalised, political young adult, he went to Serbia and there hatched the plot to kill the Archduke; then, armed, he walked back. It is these journeys Butcher wants to recreate. He starts by enlisting Arnie, his former fixer from Bosnia, as a companion. Arnie, a Bosnian Muslim, is now living in London but, after some thought, he agrees. Meanwhile Butcher tries to track down Princip’s birthplace, Obljaj. This is hard, as it is an obscure hamlet deep in what Bosnians call the <i>vukojebina</i> (literally, “where the wolves fuck”). He eventually finds it on an old map in the bowels of the Royal Geographical Society. He and Arnie make for Obljaj. <br /><br />It’s when they get there that this narrative, a little slow to start, really takes off. The Princip home is a ruin but, quite unexpectedly, they find the Princip clan still living next door. No-one can remember Gavrilo, who died in prison in 1918. But at least one man remembers his parents in their old age, and the folk-memories of Princip are strong. The next day Butcher and Arnie start a long walk to Sarajevo. The memories of the Princips, and Butcher’s own diligent research in Sarajevo, uncover a great deal new about the assassin. His killing of the Archduke is part of history but the man himself, locked up at 19, dead at 23, has always been a footnote. Butcher brings him very alive. He also conjures up a vivid picture of Sarajevo as Princip would have found it in 1907, and it reminds me very much of Aleppo, where I lived for several years in the 1990s. <br /><br />Moreover Butcher finds that Princip’s story does provide keys to the region’s history, and to the conflict of the 1990s. One or two themes emerge strongly from the book. In Butcher’s view, Austria-Hungary, which had only occupied Bosnia in 1878, was a colonial power there, extracting resources – chiefly timber – and giving a little back, but not much. Princip’s fanaticism was rooted in a hatred of what he saw as an oppressive colonial regime that had kept his people miserably poor. (He was himself the seventh of nine children; the previous six had all died in infancy.) Moreover, according to Butcher, the people Princip saw as his were all the South Slavs, not just Serbs. He was thus not a Serbian nationalist as such (and in Butcher’s view, Serbia did not support the assassination). Instead, Butcher sees him as an anti-colonial freedom fighter. It is not a universal view of Princip, especially in modern Bosnia. But Butcher argues the case very well. <br /><br />However, one of the most interesting perspectives in this book is Arnie’s. At the time people outside Yugoslavia blamed the 1990s war on ancient primitive hatreds, rather as they spoke of Northern Ireland when I was growing up, and see Syria now. Arnie doesn’t buy it. “Those people who said, ‘These people have always hated each other’ were just being lazy,” he tells Butcher. “In my own life I saw people from different communities work together, live together, get married even. There was nothing inevitable about what happened in the 1990s. It was just that a few – the extremists, the elite, the greedy – saw nationalism as a way to grab what they wanted.”<br /><br />Like <i>Blood River</i>, this is a thoughtful, well-written book, an absorbing read but also full of insights. Butcher’s knack of combining several roles – the historian, the travel writer and the journalist – serves him well. I look forward to seeing where he does it next. Meanwhile <i>The Trigger</i> is excellent, and could well be my non-fiction read of the year.

This book is equal parts biography, memoir, history, and travelogue. Tim Butcher travels Gavrilo Princip’s path from a small village in Herzegovina to Sarajevo to Belgrade and back to Sarajevo, where Princip fired the shots that took the life of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in 1914. This act is often cited as the spark than launched the Great War. During Butcher’s trek, he recalls his time as a journalist reporting on the Bosnian War in the 1990s. Covering Bosnian history from three timelines, 1910s, 1990s, and present day, and filling in the historical context, is an effective way to provide the big picture. <br /><br />Butcher tracks the development of Princip from childhood to gifted student to assassin. He discovers a stone slab on which Princip had carved his initials, his school records, and evidence of his increasing involvement in political causes. Butch portrays Princip’s motivation to free the South-Slavs from rule by Austria-Hungary. Since Princip lived only 23 years, over a hundred years ago, the primary source material is limited, but Butcher has managed to craft these nuggets into a storyline that is easy to follow and provides a wealth of information. If you are interested in the history of Bosnia/Herzegovina or WWI, this is a great one to pick up. <br />

Subtitled, “The Hunt for Gavrilo Princip; The Assassin who Brought the World to War,” this is part biography, part history and part travel book. Indeed, it is written by Tim Butcher, who is probably best known for his travel writing and whose interest in Gavrilo Princip was first aroused when he was a young reporter in Serajevo during the Bosnian War in the 1990’s. He recalls how he witnessed locals using a stone building as a makeshift lavatory, only to discover they were desecrating a memorial to Princip’s assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Why, he wondered, were the people of Serajevo so dismissive of a man who fought for their freedom?<br /><br />Many years later, the author decided to follow the trail from Princip’s home in a countryside now still dangerous from mines left over from the war, to the end of his life. During this book the author asks why WWI is still so important and looks at the impact on Princip’s actions on the history of the Bosnians, Serbs and Croats in the region. He questions whether the assassination was the spark that ignited the conflict and, on his journey, looks at the complicated history of the region as well as that of Princip’s himself.<br /><br />This is a very interesting read; for many different reasons. I was fascinated by the story of Gavrilo Princip, which was at the heart of this book. A young boy – still a teenager – who left a countryside where life still followed an almost medieval pattern. A boy who had academic ambitions; who travelled to the city to study and who dropped out in 1911. In fact, three of the dropouts that year would become revolutionaries; the education system a breeding ground for radicalism. The story of this young man is still relevant today. This teenager who fought for the cause of ridding his country of Austo-Hungarian rule and who fired the trigger which assassinated both the Archduke and his wife. The formative years of his young man’s education has significance, as the author highlights that Princip had, “the rage of the oppressed,” which is sadly still all too relevant in our world.<br /><br />Princip considered his attack on the Archduke a grand gesture – a “noble act.” I was struck by the fact I had read this story from a completely different viewpoint in, “The Assassination of the Archduke,” by Greg King <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/17286701.The_Assassination_of_the_Archduke_Sarajevo_1914_and_the_Romance_that_Changed_the_World" title="The Assassination of the Archduke Sarajevo 1914 and the Romance that Changed the World by Greg King" rel="noopener">The Assassination of the Archduke: Sarajevo 1914 and the Romance that Changed the World</a>. As such, it was really interesting to see the story from the side of the assassin himself and I recommend this book for anybody interested in both WWI and in the history of a country which has seen so much conflict and yet retains such diverse sense of identities. A very moving book in parts, which follows the story of the author and the people he met in the 1990’s as well as events so long ago, At times I found the meandering pace of the book a little slow, but generally, this was a very interesting read.<br />

<b>A concise, compelling, accessible book that is part history, part travelogue, part memoir and wholly unmissable</b><br /><br />A fascinating investigation into the life and times of Gavrilo Princip, the Serbian student who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, and which was the catalyst for World War One.<br /><br />This concise, accessible, compelling book is part history, part travelogue, and part memoir, which explains the history of the Balkans and why, despite his momentous action, Princip is now all but airbrushed out of the history of the region.<br /><br />Tim Butcher also weaves in some of his own memories as a young reporter sent by the Daily Telegraph to cover the Bosnian War, during which he chanced upon Princip’s tomb being used as a toilet. <br /><br />Not only did I come away from this book with an understanding of the complex recent history of the region, but also how the role of certain players can be celebrated or ignored according to the prevailing narrative in which the history is written.<br /><br />Princip’s primary motivation was to rid his land of the occupying Habsburgs who, like the Turks before them, presided over an almost feudal system that perpetuated the grinding poverty of his own family and which was shared by most from the three major communities in Bosnia: the Orthodox Serbs, the mainly Catholic Croats and the Muslim Bosniaks.<br /><br />To better understand how Princip came to assassinate Franz Ferdinand, Tim Butcher makes the same journey Princip made, a walk from vukojebina, Princip's desolate rural home, to Sarajevo, negotiating minefields left over the Bosnian War of the 1990s.<br /><br />If you're interested in World War One, twentieth century European history, travel writing, or finding out about the area previously known as Yugoslavia, then I feel sure you’ll find lots to enjoy and appreciate in "<a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/18300212.The_Trigger_Hunting_the_Assassin_Who_Brought_the_World_to_War" title="The Trigger Hunting the Assassin Who Brought the World to War by Tim Butcher" rel="noopener">The Trigger: Hunting the Assassin Who Brought the World to War</a>”. It’s taut, well written, very atmospheric, engaging, provocative and, as I said at the outset, fascinating.<br /><br />One of the most extraordinary facts I discovered was the numberplate of Archduke Ferdinand’s car was A111118. A numberplate that had no resonance at the time of the assassination but which also happens to be the date of Armistice Day - the moment when, after four bloody years, World War One ended - or the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918.<br /><br />In the last year or so I’ve read 12 books about World War One and can confidently state that this one is up there with the very best.<br /><br />5/5

<b>An excellent multi layered history/travelogue/personal story tracing the journey of Gavrilo Princip from remote Bosnian village to initiator of World War 1.</b><br /><br />Tim Butcher brings alive the story of Gavrilo Princip by physically following the young Bosnian Serb's journey from his remote village to the streets of Sarajevo. The author paints a fascinating story as he visits the remote hamlet where Princip grew up to discover still living descendants, takes on epic treks through the now land mine infested mountains that Princip knew, as well as discovering new insights into this infamous young man. <br /><br />Whilst combining travelogue with history not necessarily a novel approach Butcher brings a wholly personal aspect as he intertwines Princip’s history with the Balkan Wars of the 1990s. The author was a journalist present in the region during those wars and some of his personal experiences make uncomfortable reading but necessary reading.<br /> <br />I’d highly recommend this for anyone interested to the start of World War 1, 20th Century European history or anyone who enjoys stories of travel to the lesser known parts of Europe. <br />

<b>Born in a village on the remote western edge of Bosnia, Princip had undergone a process of radicalization at the schools he attended across the region, a journey that culminated in the assassination in Sarajevo</b> <br /><br />Eventually the author Tim Butcher gets around to telling us the story of Gavril Princip and the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie on June 28th 1914 in Sarajevo. This event was the seminal trigger that set in motion World War I just a month later. <br /><br />To be clear there was no manhunt for Gavril Princip. A crowd of people saw the nineteen year old, while standing on the sidewalk, walk up and shoot the royal couple at close range while they sat exposed in their open air touring car. It only took two bullets and they each died within a few minutes of one another. Ferdinand was struck in an artery in the neck and Sophie was struck in the stomach where an artery was severed. <br /><br />Astonishingly only two hours earlier a grenade had been tossed by one of Princip’s conspirators towards the royal car. The grenade missed its target and instead damaged the car behind. Acting in a most cavalier manner, the Archduke did not significantly alter the rest of the day’s activities in Sarajevo. Sure enough Princip was waiting for the couple’s return procession when he opened fire.<br /><br />Seconds after the assassination, Princip was tackled and savagely beaten by the crowd. Only intervention by the police saved Princip’s life. He was thrown into prison and in short order the other six conspirators were also rounded up. Princip was too young to be legally executed so he was convicted and languished in prison for four years. He died of tuberculosis just months before the end of the war. <br /><br />The author, Tim Butcher, is a journalist who covered the Bosnian conflict in the 1990’s. He decides to write about Princip’s origin story and trace Princip’s historical path from his hometown Obljaj to Sarajevo and in and out of Serbia and then back to Sarajevo where the assassination took place. Sarajevo was part of the Austro Hungarian empire but neighboring Serbia was independent. Princip acquired weapons and training in Belgrade Serbia.<br /><br />Yes the writing in this book is good, although it is of a journalistic style that does not always lend itself to recording the historical events of a hundred years earlier. The story was also informative and generally entertaining. <br /><br />The main criticism that I have of the book is that the author does not clearly separate his own Bosnian war experiences from Princip’s story. This is what he means by hunting down the killer, that is to do so in a historical and travelogue sense. I think if the author had put less of his own experiences into the book and separated his own story into italics it would have prevented the constant dovetailing of the two stories. <br /><br />Four stars. I am glad I read it. In addition to Princip’s story I learned a lot about Bosnia. It was at times a frustrating read for the reason mentioned above and the title is a bit misleading.

Find this and other reviews at: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow" href="http://historicalfictionreader.blogspot.com/2018/08/bookreview-trigger-hunting-assassin-who.html">http://historicalfictionreader.blogsp...</a><br /><br />My addiction to the final chapters of Hapsburg rule in Austria is well-known and thoroughly documented so it should come as no surprise that I jumped when my father gifted me a copy of The Trigger: Hunting the Assassin Who Brought the World to War by Tim Butcher. The assassination of Franz Ferdinand is easily the most recognizable moment of the era I study, but until now my understanding of that story has been entirely one-sided and I relished the opportunity to look at the events of June 28, 1914, from a new and largely enigmatic angle.<br /><br />Historically speaking, the nature of Princip’s crime and its effect on European politics has long overshadowed his personal history and due to the turbulent politics of the region, there are now remarkably few resources available to those who wish to understand both his person and the movement he represented. Recognizing the gaps in the historic record, journalist Tim Butcher set out to discover what he could by following Princip’s footsteps from the remote village of Obljaj to his prison at Terezin. The Trigger is the end result of that journey and stands as a chronicle of the author’s experiences and the insight they afforded.<br /><br />The heart of the text is, of course, Princip and the details of his life, but Butcher’s reflections on the contemporary politics and culture of the Balkans brings a rare degree of relevance to the history he documents. Most authors simply relay facts, but Butcher’s approach brings context to the assassination and challenges his audience to reconsider their understanding of it while drawing unmistakable parallels between past and present. Butcher's work shatters stereotypes about the early twentieth century, but it also illustrates how a single event can ripple across decades and resonate on various levels according to time, place, and perception.<br /><br />To make a long story short, I greatly enjoyed the time I spent reading The Trigger. It's an illuminating volume in and of itself, but I want to note that it also makes a fascinating companion to The Assassination of the Archduke: Sarajevo 1914 and the Romance that Changed the World by Greg King and Sue Woolmans. The books are not affiliated in any way, but when paired the two titles humanize both sides of a key moment in twentieth-century history and in many ways redefine the spark that lit the Powderkeg of Europe.