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Pandora’s Box cover art

Pandora’s Box

By: Jorn Leonhard,Patrick Camiller - translator
Narrated by: David de Vries
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Publisher's Summary

In this monumental history of the First World War, Germany's leading historian of the 20th century's first great catastrophe explains the war's origins, course, and consequences. With an unrivaled combination of depth and global reach, Pandora's Box reveals how profoundly the war shaped the world to come.

Jörn Leonhard treats the clash of arms with a sure feel for grand strategy, the everyday tactics of dynamic movement and slow attrition, the race for ever more destructive technologies, and the grim experiences of frontline soldiers. But the war was much more than a military conflict, or an exclusively European one. Leonhard renders the perspectives of leaders, intellectuals, artists, and ordinary men and women on diverse home fronts as they grappled with the urgency of the moment and the rise of unprecedented political and social pressures. And he tells how the entire world came out of the war utterly changed.

Postwar treaties and economic turbulence transformed geopolitics. Old empires disappeared or confronted harsh new constraints, while emerging countries struggled to find their place in an age of instability. At the same time, sparked and fueled by the shock and suffering of war, radical ideologies in Europe and around the globe swept away orders that had seemed permanent, to establish new relationships among elites, masses, and the state. Heralded on its publication in Germany as a masterpiece of historical narrative and analysis, Pandora's Box makes clear just what dangers were released when the guns first fired in the summer of 1914.

©2018 the President and Fellows of Harvard College (P)2018 Tantor
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: History

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Great reading, great analysis

A great book for understanding the first world war. Don't start with this, start with a broader history and then read this after for a deeper analysis.

The audiobook table of contents has no headings and doesn't line up neatly with the book chapters.

Performance is good and no technical issues

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Fascinating Read

The epitome of WW1 volumes… comprehensive and insightful into the large and minor events of the tragedy!

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"a landscape in which nothing was the same"

Jörn Leonhard's sweeping and widely acclaimed history is one that deserves its praise, presenting a comprehensive, thoughtful and deeply analytical account of the war and its aftermaths. Highlights include
Leonhard's attention to intellectual responses and attempts to interpret the war as it went on, along with a focus that incorporates the Eastern Front and other areas of conflict. While I wouldn't recommend it as a first book to read on the war due to it not following a simple narrative and paying relatively little attention to individual battles, it is both rewarding and rich. David DeFries' narration is also compelling and clear, making this an enjoyable 39 hours.

My only criticism is that the Audible chapters lack titles, which is unfortunate due to Leonhard's careful thematic structure. To aid other readers, this is a list of which chapters in the book map to the 70 Audible chapters:

Chapter One: Legacies: The First World War and Europe’s Long Nineteenth Century (Chapter 1) [p.1]

Chapter Two: Antecedents: Crises and Containment Before 1914 (Chapter 2) [p.21]

I: Balances of Power and Dynamics of Change (Chapter 3)

II: Conflict Areas and Action Logics (Chapter 4)

III: Panoramas of Progress, Scenarios of War (Chapter 5)

IV: Master Narratives and Open Outcomes (Chapter 6)


Chapter Three: Drift and Escalation: Summer and Fall 1914 (Chapter 7) [p.71]

I: Incubation of the War (Chapters 8-9)

II: August Landscapes: Euphoria, Fear, and the Logic of Retrospect (Chapter 10)

III: Machines and Materials: The Escalation of Killing (Chapter 11)

IV: Becoming a Soldier, Being a Soldier: From Mobilization to the Mass Army (Chapter 12)

V: Dynamic Violence, Global Zones, and Local Experiences (Chapters 13/14)

VI: Controls and Shortages: Militarized States and Improvized War Economies (Chapter 15)

VII: Loyalty and Recognition in Nations and Empires (Chapter 16)

VIII: Explaining the War: National Security and Intellectual Empowerment (Chapter 17)

IX: Five Months On: Mobilization, Disillusion, and the Irony of War (Chapter 18)


Chapter Four: Stasis and movement: 1915 [p.237] (Chapter 19)

I: Looking for Military Decisions: Battle Zones and Strategies (Chapter 20)

II: Violence in War's Shadow: Occupation Regimes and Ethnic Difference (Chapter 21)

III: Progressive Tools of Violence, War, and Their Political Costs (Chapter 22)

IV: Wait-and-See Neutrality and Rival Promises: New Players and Their Expansionist Fantasies (Chapter 23)

V: Contingency and Stubbornness: The Soldiers' Experience of the Front, and the Limits of Wartime National Rhetoric (Chapter 24)

VI: Shirkers, Profiteers, and Traitors: Economic Pressures, Social Conflicts, and Political Volatility on the Home Front (Chapters 25/26)

VII: Multi-Ethnic Societies at War: From Undisputed Loyalty to the Escalation of Ethnic Violence (Chapters 27/28)

VIII: Justifying War, Understanding Violence: Intellectual Responses to the Wartime Experience (Chapter 29)

IX: Seventeen Months of War: Radicalization and Extension Beneath a Surface of Stasis and Movement (Chapter 30)


Chapter Five: Wearing Down and Holding Out: 1916 (Chapter 31) [p.385]

I: Total Battles, Strategic Dead Ends, Tactical Innovations: The Transition to Modern Warfare on the Western Front and the High Seas (Chapters 32/33)

II: Space and Movement: The Price of Expansion into South-Eastern Europe and the Near East (Chapter 34)

III: Hunger and Shortages, Compulsion and Protest: The Tectonics of Society Struggling to Survive (Chapters 35/36)

IV: Policy Change: From the Limits of the Imperial Order to the Crisis of Political Legitimacy (Chapter 37)

V: Human Material and the Battle of Materiel: Planning, Front-Line Experiences, Ways of Coping (Chapter 38)

VI: Bodies and Nerves: The New Contours of the War Victim (Chapter 39)

VII: Discourses of War: Communication, Control, and the Limits of Opinion Formation (Chapter 40)

VIII: The Crisis of Representation: Images and Stagings of the War (Chapter 41)

IX: Twenty-Nine Months of War: Expectations and Experiences Halfway Through the War (Chapter 42)


Chapter Six: Expansion and Erosion: 1917 (Chapter 43) [p.549]

I: Crises and Innovations: The Asynchronicity of Space and Twentieth-Century Warfare (Chapter 44)

II: Nearing the Limits: Soldiers Between Deviance and Protest, Captivity and Politics (Chapter 45)

III: Lenin and Wilson: Internationalism as Revolutionary Civil War and Democratic Intervention (Chapter 46)

IV: Revolutions, Collapsing States and the Continuity of Violence: Russia Between International and Civil War (Chapters 47/48)

V: Shaky Promises: The US Decision to Enter the War and the Question of the American Nation (Chapter 49)

VI: The Revolution of Rising Expectations: 1917 as a Global Moment (Chapter 50)

VII: Social Polarization and Political Erosion: The Limits of Consensus in the Home Societies (Chapters 51/52)

VIII: The Duel Defensive: Liberals in the War (Chapter 53)

IX: Demography, Class and Genders: The Contours of Post-War Societies (Chapter 54)

X: Economic and Monetary Tectonics: The Political Economy of a New World Order (Chapter 55)

XI: Forty-One Months of War: The Impossible Year, Between Competitive Utopias and Illusions of Peace (Chapter 56)


Chapter Seven: Onrush and Collapse: 1918 (Chapter 57) [p.721]

I: From Front to Space of Violence: Dictated Peace and Civil War in Eastern Europe (Chapter 58)

II: Endgame: The War of 1914 Returns to the Western Front (Chapters 59/60)

III: Wars of Disillusion: Anticipating the Post-War Period in Southern and Eastern Europe (Chapter 61)

IV: Remobilization and Costly Victories: The Price of Cohesion in the Allied Societies (Chapter 62)

V: Hopes and Crises: Germany Between Peace-Utopias and the End of the Monarchy (Chapter 63)

VI: Break-Up Wars and Independence Struggles: The Dissolution of Continental Empires (Chapter 64)

VII: Armistice or Surrender: Ending the War in a Climate of Exhaustion (Chapter 65)

VIII: Fifty-Two Months of War, One Month of Peace: Indeterminacy of Victory and Defeat, Desynchronization of War and Peace
(Chapter 66)


Chapter Eight: Outcomes: Wars in Peace and Rival Models of Order, 1919–1923 (Chapters 67/68) [p.837]

Chapter Nine: Memories: Fragmented Experiences and Polarized Expectations (Chapter 69) [p.875]

Chapter Ten: Burdens: The First World War and the Century of Global Conflicts (Chapter 70) [p.891]

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