No recognized English translation of the diary as a whole is readily available. With the centennial of the First World War fast approaching, there appears to be renewed interest in the often neglected central role of Austria-Hungary leading up to and during the conflict, as exemplified by Christopher Clark’s magnificent scholarly work, The Sleepwalkers, or Manfred Rauchensteiner’s new volume The First World War and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy. Similar to the new translation of the graphic notebooks of French corporal Louis Barthas, it would be valuable and timely for an American publisher to resurrect the gritty realism of Egon Erwin Kisch in order that the wider English-speaking public can observe the cataclysmic and grim slaughter which constituted the First World War and prevent a similar tragedy.

Franz-Stefan Gady is a senior fellow at the EastWest Institute, where he was a program associate and founding member of the Worldwide Cybersecurity Initiative. Follow him on Twitter (@HoansSolo).