Yesterday, my brother recommended the history podcast The Rest Is History. The podcast features Dominic Sandbrook, a historian with a PhD in history from Cambridge, and public historian Tom Holland (not the Spider-Man actor). Beyond my brother’s glowing recommendation, what really piqued my interest was that The Rest Is History is in the midst of kicking off a deep dive into the history of World War I. They had just released four episodes detailing the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
Last night, I listened to the first episode of that cycle, which delves into what little is known about the assassin, 19-year-old Gavrilo Princip. During the podcast, Sandbrook and Holland commented on how similar a profile Princip had to what we know of many of the young men who have engaged in mass shootings across the US. Like many of those killers, Princip was ostracised during high school, had difficulty making friends, and seemed deeply unhappy and impressionable.
What made it even more striking were all the similarities between Princip and what we currently know about Trump’s attempted assassin, Thomas Matthew Crooks. As usual history rhymes in unexpected and uncanny ways.
I highly recommend The Rest Is History, just be warned that it might strike a little close to home.
