'This country's most distinguished historian of the Second World War ... Overy's book is easily the best account of Europe's descent into the death and destruction that were Hitler's element' Michael Burleigh, Evening Standard

24 August 1939: The fate of the world is hanging in the balance. Hitler has ambitions to invade Poland and hopes Stalin will help him. The West must stop them. If they fail, the world will go to war.

Richard Overy's dramatic account re-creates hour-by-hour the last days of peace, as politicians and the public braced themselves for a war they feared might spell the end of civilization.

'A gripping analysis of the final days of peace ... indispensable' M. R. D. Foot, The Times

'Nail-biting ... with rare narrative verve, he documents the ultimatums, emissaries, letters and increasingly desperate proposals that shuttled across Europe in the countdown to war' Ian Thomson, Independent

'Even those who think they know it all about how war broke out will learn something from Richard Overy's book' Simon Heffer, Literary Review

'One of the great historians of this conflict' Simon Garfield, Observer