The fateful alliance: France, Russia, and the coming of the First World War

"Kennan's initial focus is specific: How did Russia and France agree in 1894 that in the event of even partial mobilization by the Triple Alliance they would immediately take hostile action against it? In answering this question he achieves nothing less than a masterful analysis of what was going wrong in Europe at the end of the nineteenth century and of what faults of vision had caused these wrongs."