What brought Europe to war was not the great alliance blocks, nor the Europe-wide arms race (one aspect of the story that is curiously neglected here), but the last gasp of the old Eastern Question, which had plagued European diplomacy for a century.

ECONOMIST: 20th-century history

The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield.

FORBES: Three Books For The New Graduate

Its strength derives in part from the architectural barbarism of the post-war years, when Victorian terraces were bulldozed and replaced with brutalist blocks.

ECONOMIST: Housing