"He was reading 'The GunsofAugust'" Sorenson told him, which documented how miscalculation and momentum propelled the nations of Europe into World War I.
Tragically, the weapons with which the next war will be fought - an avoidable war brought on by the Diplomacy of September - will make the lethal GunsofAugust seem like pop-guns by comparison.
In her Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The GunsofAugust, Barbara Tuchman chronicled how a cascading series of seemingly minor developments led inexorably to World War I and the worst carnage known to man up to that time.