What do you think?
Rate this book
The Guns of August / The Proud Tower
One of the best-known historians of her time, Barbara W. Tuchman distilled the complex interplay of personalities and events into gripping narratives that combine lucid scholarship with elegant literary art. A shrewd portraitist, she laid bare the all-too-human failures of leaders caught in the pull of historical currents and often tragically blinded by biases of culture and temperament.
Nowhere are her talents more brilliantly on display than in her Pulitzer Prize–winning bestseller The Guns of August (1962), a riveting account of the outbreak of World War I and the weeks of fighting leading up to the First Battle of the Marne in September 1914. Tuchman dramatizes the diplomatic debacles that precipitated the war and the intransigence of the German and French armies as they dogmatically adhered to their battle plans, with disastrous consequences. Interwoven with her vivid re-creation of the German march through Belgium into France and the fierce fighting on the Eastern Front are astute characterizations of the conflict’s key military and political leaders, among them French General Joseph Joffre, German Kaiser Wilhelm II, and British First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill. The Guns of August can also be read as a cautionary study in the perils of brinksmanship, and Tuchman’s searching observations about the irrational escalation of conflict among states made a deep impression on President John F. Kennedy, who famously drew on the book for insight during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In a deluxe reader’s edition for the first time in more than a generation, The Guns of August is presented here with ten fully restored color maps and sixteen pages of photographs.
Some of Tuchman’s finest writing graces her next book, The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890–1914 (1966). She brings to life the disparate worlds of the self-satisfied English aristocracy and the miserable poor whose conditions gave rise to international anarchism; revisits the national madness of the Dreyfus Affair in France; considers the naiveté and cynicism of the varied participants in the international peace conferences at The Hague; mounts a dazzling foray into cultural criticism with a meditation on the operas of Richard Strauss; and creates unforgettable portraits of such political titans as Thomas B. Reed, longtime Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, and French Socialist leader Jean Jaurès. Honoring the historian’s ideal to envision life “as it really was,” Tuchman paints a fin-de-siècle world “bursting with new tensions and accumulated energies.” The present volume reproduces the original endpaper illustrations from the first edition of The Proud Tower, plus a thirty-two page insert of illustrations. And as a special coda, it presents “How We Entered World War I,” a 1967 essay that appeared in The New York Times Magazine in which Tuchman explores the genesis of U.S. involvement in the Great War.
Nowhere are her talents more brilliantly on display than in her Pulitzer Prize–winning bestseller The Guns of August (1962), a riveting account of the outbreak of World War I and the weeks of fighting leading up to the First Battle of the Marne in September 1914. Tuchman dramatizes the diplomatic debacles that precipitated the war and the intransigence of the German and French armies as they dogmatically adhered to their battle plans, with disastrous consequences. Interwoven with her vivid re-creation of the German march through Belgium into France and the fierce fighting on the Eastern Front are astute characterizations of the conflict’s key military and political leaders, among them French General Joseph Joffre, German Kaiser Wilhelm II, and British First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill. The Guns of August can also be read as a cautionary study in the perils of brinksmanship, and Tuchman’s searching observations about the irrational escalation of conflict among states made a deep impression on President John F. Kennedy, who famously drew on the book for insight during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In a deluxe reader’s edition for the first time in more than a generation, The Guns of August is presented here with ten fully restored color maps and sixteen pages of photographs.
Some of Tuchman’s finest writing graces her next book, The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890–1914 (1966). She brings to life the disparate worlds of the self-satisfied English aristocracy and the miserable poor whose conditions gave rise to international anarchism; revisits the national madness of the Dreyfus Affair in France; considers the naiveté and cynicism of the varied participants in the international peace conferences at The Hague; mounts a dazzling foray into cultural criticism with a meditation on the operas of Richard Strauss; and creates unforgettable portraits of such political titans as Thomas B. Reed, longtime Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, and French Socialist leader Jean Jaurès. Honoring the historian’s ideal to envision life “as it really was,” Tuchman paints a fin-de-siècle world “bursting with new tensions and accumulated energies.” The present volume reproduces the original endpaper illustrations from the first edition of The Proud Tower, plus a thirty-two page insert of illustrations. And as a special coda, it presents “How We Entered World War I,” a 1967 essay that appeared in The New York Times Magazine in which Tuchman explores the genesis of U.S. involvement in the Great War.
1264 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1962
32 people are currently reading
720 people want to read
About the author
Barbara W. Tuchman
54 books2,413 followersBarbara Wertheim Tuchman, historian, won a Pulitzer Prize for
The Guns of August
(1962) and for
Stilwell and the American Experience in China
(1971).
As an author, Tuchman focused on popular production. Her clear, dramatic storytelling covered topics as diverse as the 14th century and World War I and sold millions of copies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara...
As an author, Tuchman focused on popular production. Her clear, dramatic storytelling covered topics as diverse as the 14th century and World War I and sold millions of copies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara...
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
November 8, 2013
Barbara Tuchhman was one of the great narrative historians. I first read THE GUNS OF AUGUST when it was published during my college years and was taken up with its recounting of the steps (more accurately missteps) that led to WWI. Rereading the book some forty years later did not disappoint. I had not previously read THE PROUD TOWER, however, which portrays Europe during the approximately three decades prior to the war. This volume was more ambitious, developing themes that unite elements that historians often treat separately, such as the political, diplomatic, social, and artistic developments of the period. I thought she did this very effectively. I am an historian of America and thus am not conversant with how the historiography of this period might have changed in the years since Tuchman wrote her books. But whatever questions the scholars might have regarding her work, these are works of history that general readers with an interest in their subjects will find fascinating, enlightening, and enjoyable.
February 17, 2019
I first read these books about the time they were published. Likely in the order of publication with some delay on the second title as I was uncertain of its topic. The Library of America Edition of Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August / The Proud Tower (Hardcover) sat on my TB(Re)R hard copies stack for several years until the 100 year anniversary of the end of WW I brought it back in mind. Ms Tuchman’s way of writing remains as informative and as readable as I had remembered. Taken together these book present a detailed and conclusive view of the societies and military thinking that led to and first fought World War I.
These two book and an earlier one, The Zimmerman Telegram are often thought of as a trilogy. The three books are related in history but they can stand alone or be read in any order. As is these two titles are out of historic sequence in the Library of America edition. Book 2, The Proud Towers is a review of particular times and places either in Europe or America in the years before WW I. The Guns of August is a highly targeted review of the politics and military planning in the weeks before and the first weeks of after the outbreak of World War I.
Reviewing them in the order published and here printed, The Guns of August is clearly structured around the intended schedule of Imperial Germany’s Schlieffen Plan. The basis for this plan was that in the case of a continental war, German be threatened by the attacking armies of Russia and France. Rather than granting both powers time to mobilize the German Army would preemptively attack through what was supposed to be neural Belgium, and march through Paris , ending France as a threat and perhaps a nation. The Imperial German Army could then turn to face the much slower to mobilize, Russians. There was a strict time table for this plan and this time table as planed and as attempted drives the outline of The Guns of August.
Based upon this book and others, it is my conviction that if one nation is to blame for World War I, it is Germany. Not argued here but from other readings, the original map of modern German was shaped by a cannon ball. More exactly the then victorious England and her allies at the end of the Napoleonic wars. This new assembly of previously independent regional entities was intended to act as a buffer between France and Russia. Over time German borders were re-drawn by German Chancellor Bismarck into a larger potentially more stable Protestant Germany. Politically Germany was a loose federation of duchies, royal holdings and occasionally aligned cooperatives, each retaining its particular identity, rules for citizen ship and mutually mistrustive. Together their history was one of constant struggle between states seeking influence over national policy. Practically it would be a coalition around Prussia, its nobility (Junkers) and its army that would control the aims of the larger nation.
Once the immature and possibly irrational Kaiser William II ascended the throne and shouldered off the advice of the aging Bismarck; the new goal of Germany was Lebensraum, or Living space. Space for Germany at the expense of all neighbors. Following years of aggressive diplomacy and arrogant posturing, German made itself disliked and suspicious. Germany saw itself as misunderstood unfairly isolated and threatened. German was not alone in planning to convert this situation into an aggressive war, but it was Germany that initiated WWI by it by its illegal invasion of Belgium.
This single action by the attacking Germans immediately ended any English uncertainty about its duty to enter the war. The behavior of the invading Germans further stained German reputation and ultimate cost Germany American sympathy and German ability to argue for American neutrality. Finally, German plans had it been victorious was to enforce subservience on Europe. Insisting on German needs and wants to a degree that gentles the proven failures of the Treaty of Versailles dictated to the defeated WWI German nation.
Blame only Germany is as is briefly shown in The Guns of August is too easy and ignores at least one vague fact of the era and the terrible misjudgment of one other nation.
The Vague Fact:
There was something of a European wide zeitgeist that a European war had to be fought, sooner or later. It would be a swift terrible, but a glorious re affirmation of the manhood of the warring nations. To the degree that this model was causative it makes for a sad argument for what might now be called toxic manhood.
The terrible misjudgment:
Imperial Russia having been humiliated in its Crimean Wars and the destruction of its navy by Japan, wanted a cheap victory in Europe to prove it was not the hollow, corrupt and failing nation it was. By supporting Pan-Slavism and hoping to keep the risks associated with this policy isolated to the Balkans, Russia misread the determination of Germany to back its treaty duties towards Austria The promise of Russian support encouraged Serbia to be slow in its capitulation to Austria’s Ultimatum and so the interlocking treaty and mobilization time tables overrode more considered but less violent alternatives.
The previous are my conclusions based on Tuchman among others. The specifics of The Guns of August is a narrative of the planning, and execution by the major armies, German, French British and Russian. She analyzes the problems of generals fighting the last war and the terrible under appreciation of modern weaponry. Repeating rifles and proto machineguns had been seen in war prior to 1914, but had not been fully integrated into battlefield planning. . Previously under-appreciated things like the visibility of uniforms had to be rethought in terms of calculations. Warfare could no longer just be about fighting spirit. Mathematics had to be driving all elements of planning. From the logistics of how many rail road cars and horses to feed arm fighting armies; to more bloodless calculations of bloody counts. How far y can a rifleman be expected to see and hit an enemy? Colder yet: how fast can a man on foot cross a battle field versus how many rounds can defenders effectively fire from a machinegun position?
Tuchman reports these things and later documents the results of this new mathematics of war as theory was tested in actual war.
Moving from the Guns of August and backwards in time to The Proud Tower, Tuchman seeks to dismiss the romantic history of the Fin de siècle or La Belle Époque. The end of the Victorian era was as much a cultural period as it was one of social change and challenge. It was the end of unregulated capitalism. It saw the rise of trade unionism and the various strains of socialist thinking. In a world where working families had to make daily decisions about who got to leave the overcrowded tenements based on how much clothes they owned people had no reason to be quiet as their employers concentrated more wealth into the hands of the few favored. Alternately new economic theories tended to be driven by complex academic arguments, at the expense of the immediate needs of these same starving people.
It is easy for us to look backwards and romanticize about how a society was built around making life easy for those who could afford it. Against the lavish services available to the haves, the problems of the have nots were so comprehensive that the British Army had to drop minimum height requirements by 3 inches. Mal nourishment was that common.
Alternately the theorists on the left would not focus on the real world need to immediately improve the life for the proletariat. Some preferred that suffering continue in the hope that suffering would speed the day of revolution. People wanted to be fed and to share in the wealth they were working to create. Theorists could ignore immediate relief hoping for the violent introduction of some future better world. Truly there was a specter haunting Europe, but Marx among others failed to understand that the specter was living people who had need of immediate answers.
Throughout both books, Tuchman’s voice is authoritative and soundly based in the research. She routinely makes known her opinion, especially of people and decisions she can prove to be failures. She is also capable of nuance. French commanding General Joffre comes in for lots of criticism and her case against him is solid. Yet she also credits him with the firmness of purpose and refusal to panic that held his retreating armies together long enough to exhaust and hold the apparently unstoppable German Army.
Likewise in The Proud Tower she shows her open derision towards the sometimes violent, but more typically ineffective nihilist movement Politicians, and political theorists are sequentially held up, examined and ruled on merit. She can parse between the optimist and the self-deluded and the jingoistic. She has little time for Kaiser William, but a generation of French, German and British political leadership are grist for her researched and justified judgements.
Ms. Tuchman was not a fully trained historian. It can be argued that she was not as dispassionate as expected of period academic historians. Her books The Guns of August and the Proud Tower narrates complexities and we benefit from her willingness to engage.
These two book and an earlier one, The Zimmerman Telegram are often thought of as a trilogy. The three books are related in history but they can stand alone or be read in any order. As is these two titles are out of historic sequence in the Library of America edition. Book 2, The Proud Towers is a review of particular times and places either in Europe or America in the years before WW I. The Guns of August is a highly targeted review of the politics and military planning in the weeks before and the first weeks of after the outbreak of World War I.
Reviewing them in the order published and here printed, The Guns of August is clearly structured around the intended schedule of Imperial Germany’s Schlieffen Plan. The basis for this plan was that in the case of a continental war, German be threatened by the attacking armies of Russia and France. Rather than granting both powers time to mobilize the German Army would preemptively attack through what was supposed to be neural Belgium, and march through Paris , ending France as a threat and perhaps a nation. The Imperial German Army could then turn to face the much slower to mobilize, Russians. There was a strict time table for this plan and this time table as planed and as attempted drives the outline of The Guns of August.
Based upon this book and others, it is my conviction that if one nation is to blame for World War I, it is Germany. Not argued here but from other readings, the original map of modern German was shaped by a cannon ball. More exactly the then victorious England and her allies at the end of the Napoleonic wars. This new assembly of previously independent regional entities was intended to act as a buffer between France and Russia. Over time German borders were re-drawn by German Chancellor Bismarck into a larger potentially more stable Protestant Germany. Politically Germany was a loose federation of duchies, royal holdings and occasionally aligned cooperatives, each retaining its particular identity, rules for citizen ship and mutually mistrustive. Together their history was one of constant struggle between states seeking influence over national policy. Practically it would be a coalition around Prussia, its nobility (Junkers) and its army that would control the aims of the larger nation.
Once the immature and possibly irrational Kaiser William II ascended the throne and shouldered off the advice of the aging Bismarck; the new goal of Germany was Lebensraum, or Living space. Space for Germany at the expense of all neighbors. Following years of aggressive diplomacy and arrogant posturing, German made itself disliked and suspicious. Germany saw itself as misunderstood unfairly isolated and threatened. German was not alone in planning to convert this situation into an aggressive war, but it was Germany that initiated WWI by it by its illegal invasion of Belgium.
This single action by the attacking Germans immediately ended any English uncertainty about its duty to enter the war. The behavior of the invading Germans further stained German reputation and ultimate cost Germany American sympathy and German ability to argue for American neutrality. Finally, German plans had it been victorious was to enforce subservience on Europe. Insisting on German needs and wants to a degree that gentles the proven failures of the Treaty of Versailles dictated to the defeated WWI German nation.
Blame only Germany is as is briefly shown in The Guns of August is too easy and ignores at least one vague fact of the era and the terrible misjudgment of one other nation.
The Vague Fact:
There was something of a European wide zeitgeist that a European war had to be fought, sooner or later. It would be a swift terrible, but a glorious re affirmation of the manhood of the warring nations. To the degree that this model was causative it makes for a sad argument for what might now be called toxic manhood.
The terrible misjudgment:
Imperial Russia having been humiliated in its Crimean Wars and the destruction of its navy by Japan, wanted a cheap victory in Europe to prove it was not the hollow, corrupt and failing nation it was. By supporting Pan-Slavism and hoping to keep the risks associated with this policy isolated to the Balkans, Russia misread the determination of Germany to back its treaty duties towards Austria The promise of Russian support encouraged Serbia to be slow in its capitulation to Austria’s Ultimatum and so the interlocking treaty and mobilization time tables overrode more considered but less violent alternatives.
The previous are my conclusions based on Tuchman among others. The specifics of The Guns of August is a narrative of the planning, and execution by the major armies, German, French British and Russian. She analyzes the problems of generals fighting the last war and the terrible under appreciation of modern weaponry. Repeating rifles and proto machineguns had been seen in war prior to 1914, but had not been fully integrated into battlefield planning. . Previously under-appreciated things like the visibility of uniforms had to be rethought in terms of calculations. Warfare could no longer just be about fighting spirit. Mathematics had to be driving all elements of planning. From the logistics of how many rail road cars and horses to feed arm fighting armies; to more bloodless calculations of bloody counts. How far y can a rifleman be expected to see and hit an enemy? Colder yet: how fast can a man on foot cross a battle field versus how many rounds can defenders effectively fire from a machinegun position?
Tuchman reports these things and later documents the results of this new mathematics of war as theory was tested in actual war.
Moving from the Guns of August and backwards in time to The Proud Tower, Tuchman seeks to dismiss the romantic history of the Fin de siècle or La Belle Époque. The end of the Victorian era was as much a cultural period as it was one of social change and challenge. It was the end of unregulated capitalism. It saw the rise of trade unionism and the various strains of socialist thinking. In a world where working families had to make daily decisions about who got to leave the overcrowded tenements based on how much clothes they owned people had no reason to be quiet as their employers concentrated more wealth into the hands of the few favored. Alternately new economic theories tended to be driven by complex academic arguments, at the expense of the immediate needs of these same starving people.
It is easy for us to look backwards and romanticize about how a society was built around making life easy for those who could afford it. Against the lavish services available to the haves, the problems of the have nots were so comprehensive that the British Army had to drop minimum height requirements by 3 inches. Mal nourishment was that common.
Alternately the theorists on the left would not focus on the real world need to immediately improve the life for the proletariat. Some preferred that suffering continue in the hope that suffering would speed the day of revolution. People wanted to be fed and to share in the wealth they were working to create. Theorists could ignore immediate relief hoping for the violent introduction of some future better world. Truly there was a specter haunting Europe, but Marx among others failed to understand that the specter was living people who had need of immediate answers.
Throughout both books, Tuchman’s voice is authoritative and soundly based in the research. She routinely makes known her opinion, especially of people and decisions she can prove to be failures. She is also capable of nuance. French commanding General Joffre comes in for lots of criticism and her case against him is solid. Yet she also credits him with the firmness of purpose and refusal to panic that held his retreating armies together long enough to exhaust and hold the apparently unstoppable German Army.
Likewise in The Proud Tower she shows her open derision towards the sometimes violent, but more typically ineffective nihilist movement Politicians, and political theorists are sequentially held up, examined and ruled on merit. She can parse between the optimist and the self-deluded and the jingoistic. She has little time for Kaiser William, but a generation of French, German and British political leadership are grist for her researched and justified judgements.
Ms. Tuchman was not a fully trained historian. It can be argued that she was not as dispassionate as expected of period academic historians. Her books The Guns of August and the Proud Tower narrates complexities and we benefit from her willingness to engage.
June 24, 2020
Library of America has reprinted 2 of Barbara Tuchman's most significant historical works in its series of great American literature, in this volume. "The Guns of August" is more-or-less a day by day history of the first month of World War I and how it went from ghastly slaughter on open battlefields to the horror of the trench warfare that it became for the remainimg years of the war. It chronicles the mistakes made by the high commands of both sides. They tended to use 19th century strategies & tactics which had no appreciation for how the machine gun made them obsolete. They had little appreciation of how to use airplanes. And there were conflicts among the allies and their leading generals & politicians.
"The Proud Tower" is a series of portraits of various aspects of both the politics and culture of 30 years prior to World War I in Britain, Western Europe & the United States. Someone once compared visiting the past to visiting a foreign country. To understand what we were like just over 100 years ago, we have to immerse ourselves in the cultural assumptions and material conditions of those times in order to get a good understanding of them and how much we have changed since then. And, not least, to understand how the Great War came about.
This volume also includes a short essay entitled "How We Entered World War I" which Tuchman published in May 1967.
In this centennial year of the beginning of World War I, there is hardly a better introduction to those times than the works included in this volume.
"The Proud Tower" is a series of portraits of various aspects of both the politics and culture of 30 years prior to World War I in Britain, Western Europe & the United States. Someone once compared visiting the past to visiting a foreign country. To understand what we were like just over 100 years ago, we have to immerse ourselves in the cultural assumptions and material conditions of those times in order to get a good understanding of them and how much we have changed since then. And, not least, to understand how the Great War came about.
This volume also includes a short essay entitled "How We Entered World War I" which Tuchman published in May 1967.
In this centennial year of the beginning of World War I, there is hardly a better introduction to those times than the works included in this volume.
March 2, 2017
This volume includes two books by Barbara Tuchman: The Guns of August and The Proud Tower. The first book; The Guns of August is a detailed account of World War I. The Proud Tower is an in depth look at all aspects of society leading up to WW1; social structures, economics, politics, socialism, anarchy in Britain, Europe, Russia, and the U.S. Consider the whole volume a chronicle of Western civilization right before and through Season 1 of Downtown Abbey.
I read The Proud Tower first since it concerns the time before WW1: 1890 - 1914. Do not be put off by detail heavy long paragraphs leading to longer chapters. Ms. Tuchman tells history as a story and tells each story in an easy to follow, chronological, cause and effect narration that relates detail effortlessly while giving the reader a sense of the big picture.
I especially enjoyed the part about the English aristocracy and how the same forces shaped and were changed in America. I also loved the detailed account of politics in the U.S. at that time. Reading about the machinations of the different parties in Congress and how they're not that different than today. They didn't have the filibuster but they had other rules and ways to block progress they didn't like. Unlike now there was a very strong Leader of the House who brilliantly made things happen despite the other parties obstructionism.
I didn't try to remember all of the names and dates. I just kept reading and the really important ones kept appearing making them easy to remember, and the dates fell easily into place due to the authors clear narration.
I read The Proud Tower first since it concerns the time before WW1: 1890 - 1914. Do not be put off by detail heavy long paragraphs leading to longer chapters. Ms. Tuchman tells history as a story and tells each story in an easy to follow, chronological, cause and effect narration that relates detail effortlessly while giving the reader a sense of the big picture.
I especially enjoyed the part about the English aristocracy and how the same forces shaped and were changed in America. I also loved the detailed account of politics in the U.S. at that time. Reading about the machinations of the different parties in Congress and how they're not that different than today. They didn't have the filibuster but they had other rules and ways to block progress they didn't like. Unlike now there was a very strong Leader of the House who brilliantly made things happen despite the other parties obstructionism.
I didn't try to remember all of the names and dates. I just kept reading and the really important ones kept appearing making them easy to remember, and the dates fell easily into place due to the authors clear narration.
March 25, 2016
Have finally read Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August. Her book The Proud Tower was and is one of my favorite books, and gave me a substantial "leg up" in my undergraduate European history courses. For some reason, though, I was never able to get into the The Guns until now. It is superb. While Tuchman was not an academic historian, she knew her material thoroughly, and, oh, her prose is wonderful. She can take a complex military situation and explain it in such a way that a civilian has no problems understanding it. More importantly, she also has the ability to understand--and convey to the reader--the broader implications of the military situation on the world at large. If you have any interest in the First World War, or the history of the 20th century, you must read this book.
September 4, 2014
Brilliant.
June 16, 2014
First part of the book read in May 2014:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Second part of the book read in May/June 2014:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Two 4* books equal 4* in total. The lavish production of this volume and a short essay on America's entry into WW I concluding this volume make it 5*. The essay ends with an astonishingly far-sighted conclusion on America's role in the world, especially considering that this essay was written in 1967. America, please listen:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Second part of the book read in May/June 2014:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Two 4* books equal 4* in total. The lavish production of this volume and a short essay on America's entry into WW I concluding this volume make it 5*. The essay ends with an astonishingly far-sighted conclusion on America's role in the world, especially considering that this essay was written in 1967. America, please listen:
"Where once we saw ourselves self-contained and free to stand apart, we now see ourselves as if endowed with some mission to organize the world in our image. Militarily we could knock out Hanoi, and doubtless Peking, too, tomorrow, but we cannot raise a clean new democracy on nuclear ashes. Whatever our material or political power, it is not enough for omnipotence. We cannot mold the non-Western world to our desires nor require its acceptance of our concepts of political freedomand representative government. It is too late in history to export to the nations of Asia and Africa with unschooled and undernourished populations in the hundreds of millions the democracy that evolved in the West over a thousand years of slow, small-scale experience from the Saxon village moot to the Bill of Rights. They have not had time to learn it and history is not going to give them time. Meanwhile we live on the same globe. The better part ov alor is to spend it learning to live with differences, however hostile, unless and until we can find another planet."
July 27, 2016
Justly celebrated. Among the historians that should be read in order to understand the consensus of our age. I found myself admiring the wealth of research presented in such a lyric way, the story memorable and paced.
Tuchman's book is so widely accepted that I recognized its narrative devices (the Edwardian funeral in the opening, for example) in many textbooks and documentaries. Beyond an understanding of the events and people of the time, the synthesis in Guns of August has been readily placed within the current understanding of this time as the prevailing perspective. It is a deserved authority.
The Proud Tower shows this technique of narrative frame even more clearly and entertainingly. The chapter on 19th century German 'Neroism' spins out the decadence of the gilded age in the scope of Richard Strauss' career. This seems to be a deftly chosen center of perspectival gravity for understanding the combination of positivism and ennui that eradicated humility in the psyche of that place and time. Tuchman was a sure footed hunter of big historical game.
Tuchman's book is so widely accepted that I recognized its narrative devices (the Edwardian funeral in the opening, for example) in many textbooks and documentaries. Beyond an understanding of the events and people of the time, the synthesis in Guns of August has been readily placed within the current understanding of this time as the prevailing perspective. It is a deserved authority.
The Proud Tower shows this technique of narrative frame even more clearly and entertainingly. The chapter on 19th century German 'Neroism' spins out the decadence of the gilded age in the scope of Richard Strauss' career. This seems to be a deftly chosen center of perspectival gravity for understanding the combination of positivism and ennui that eradicated humility in the psyche of that place and time. Tuchman was a sure footed hunter of big historical game.
May 29, 2012
History is a great equalizer. Tuchman’s studies of the immediate prelude to & first months of WWI (The Guns of August), and the 24 years preceding it (The Proud Tower) bear more than striking resemblance to recent times. An era marked by the propagation of war by ruse for ulterior motives, entangling alliances, strategic mismanagement at a cost of millions, tenacious terrorism & fanatical nationalism, acute economic disparity & political polarization, and populist platitudes should resonate in a world familiar with Iraq, Middle Eastern policy, Afghanistan, al-Qaeda & right-wing extremism, laissez-faire capitalism & congressional gridlock, and “Tea Parties”. Will a New Deal-style progressive reform eventually repeat itself, too? Let’s hope so.
Read
December 26, 2013Not an easy read, in view of the level of detail. It seemed that one should either read it quickly, in a couple of long weekends, or a chapter or so at a time--I opted for the latter.
Needless to say, for someone looking for a treatise on the follies of modern warfare, this would be a great place to start.
Or should I say, a transition from 19th-century warfare to modern warfare, given the differences exhibited by the general staffs of the countries involved.
Needless to say, for someone looking for a treatise on the follies of modern warfare, this would be a great place to start.
Or should I say, a transition from 19th-century warfare to modern warfare, given the differences exhibited by the general staffs of the countries involved.
January 12, 2014
This is a review for the first part of the book, The Guns of August.
Tuchman does a fine job of telling an incredibly detailed account of the first 30 days of WWI. Showing how the first month, leading to the Battle of Marne, would decide the outcome of the war( not that the Germans would lose or the Allies win, but that it would be a disastrous and long war).
Tuchman does a fine job of telling an incredibly detailed account of the first 30 days of WWI. Showing how the first month, leading to the Battle of Marne, would decide the outcome of the war( not that the Germans would lose or the Allies win, but that it would be a disastrous and long war).
December 17, 2014
The beginning of WWI - I knew so little beyond the assassination of the Arch Duke and the basic outline of conflict. This is a really good book. It is a well-written chronicle of a gripping story, truly a page turner. I am glad we read The Proud Tower first as it set a good foundation for understanding some of the motivations of the main characters.
June 8, 2012
I learned much about the beginnings of WWI.
June 29, 2013
excellent well written detailed exposition of the the first month of WWI, and the second book is an excellent portrait of the world leading up to WWI.
Read
June 2, 2013Very enjoyable,well written
April 28, 2014
Diesmal ein Klassiker zum Thema #WW1 The Guns of August - handelt leider nicht nur vom August
http://www.weberseite.at/buecher/the-...
http://www.weberseite.at/buecher/the-...
May 29, 2015
Interesting, worth the read not boring three chapters in.
January 5, 2019
Tuchman's prose is excellent. Her history on the other hand is not. There have been many more documents revealed and studied in the years since this book was published, and this was left in the dust as a result. Tuchman had a decent grip of the historiography as it generally was in the early 1960s. But for the 2010s and beyond her work does not hold up. So much has changed since TGOA. Entire schools of historiographical thought have come and go.
This tends to be a favorite of many readers, but I would instead guide them to a newer book on the outbreak of war and its initial campaigns. Beautiful prose, but beyond that it doesn't have much to offer a modern reader.
This tends to be a favorite of many readers, but I would instead guide them to a newer book on the outbreak of war and its initial campaigns. Beautiful prose, but beyond that it doesn't have much to offer a modern reader.
Read
July 17, 2025Guns of August was a solid four stars. The amount of detail about the primary (and secondary) actors of this story was incredible. Details about what actually happened during the battles could be more hit or miss—usually, you only got a page or two describing what happened after very engaging reads about everyone involved.
Didn't finish The Proud Tower. I liked the first chapter (there are only eight and they are very long!) and planning on revisiting it at some point, but just not in the mood for another book about this era right now.
Didn't finish The Proud Tower. I liked the first chapter (there are only eight and they are very long!) and planning on revisiting it at some point, but just not in the mood for another book about this era right now.
September 11, 2019
I am a huge fan of Barbara Tuchman. I read The Proud Tower oh maybe 30-40 years ago and very much enjoyed it. Just finished The Guns of August which I also enjoyed very much. I am surprised at the position of the books in this volume. I would recommend reading The Proud Tower first as it precedes chronologically; however they are different enough so that you won't lose a lot by reading them in the book's order.
September 13, 2020
there is a reason this book won the Pulitzer Prize. Brilliant writing, and it provides a very helpful foundation for understanding socio/political dynamics of WWI, and kind of also, WWII. And, WWI need not have ever happened... think about that...
December 17, 2020
This was two books in one, read only the first one, the Guns of August- I found it dense and hard to follow the names, or whose side they’re on at times but it’s very well written and learned a lot about what led to WWI.
Will maybe read the Proud Tower (second book) some other time.
Will maybe read the Proud Tower (second book) some other time.
May 24, 2023
This is my favorite book. Barbara Tuchman was a brilliant writer. She did not write academic history. Rather, she preferred “popular history”. Her aim was readers “turning the page.” The academic history community did not all appreciate her approach. She was a rebel, and a very successful one.
October 31, 2020
I read all her books a long time ago. Just updating Goodreads.
December 12, 2024
deep - but as we tumble perhaps into WWIII,, there are lessons to learn from WWI
January 19, 2026
Could not read this.
August 12, 2016
I have just finished The Guns of August this morning. This is a dense, well-researched account of the first month of WWI, with attention paid to factors leading up to the war. I knew very little about the conflict, and now feel I have a solid basis. I had no idea that Germany had planned for decades, down to an invasion plan and violating the neutrality of Belgium. Tuchman was clearly a master historian.She provides much information, but her humor shines through at times, especially when describing various personalities involved. The afterword was a difficult read, as she summed up the loss of life not only in that first month,but over the next four years.
I think will read The Proud Tower a bit later; I think I need a bit of break from the density. Next up: The Cardinal's hat, about Hippolito D'Este, son of Lucrezia Borgia and one of the D'Este guys!
I think will read The Proud Tower a bit later; I think I need a bit of break from the density. Next up: The Cardinal's hat, about Hippolito D'Este, son of Lucrezia Borgia and one of the D'Este guys!
November 28, 2022
Required reading in order to understand the first world war and what led up to it. I'm amazed by a couple of things, first is that Kaiser's Germany was not all that different from Hitler's Germany, in terms of racism and rapacious military strategy. Second in looking at France in the decades leading up to world war I, it's pretty easy to see the parallels to modern day America.
December 30, 2014
Both are quite good, but I preferred The Proud Tower for its wider sweep of time and events.
Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews