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This is a 5 star book squeezed into a tiny, tiny paperback. Do NOT buy this edition. the print is impossibly small.I returned it immediately.Buy a trade size edition. I couldn't see one on amazon.com and went to Border's and found it immediately.
But she does lay the groundwork for what was to come. The book is also powerfully describes the suffering of civilians, especially Belgians, at the hands of the Germans.
Starting with a description of the monarchical-familial ties of many of the leaders of the European states before the war, Tuchman also describes the philosophies of war and battle that drove the French and German warplanners. In this seminal work, Barbara Tuchman provides a clear and well written history of the events and currents of thought which led to the disastrous First World War.
French, German, Russian and English military leaders all come off as barely competent or so self assured they are unable to see the folly in what they are doing. It was the plans these thinkers created -- the Schlieffen Plan for Germany, offensives in Alsace for the French -- that led directly to the later stalemates on the Western Front, and years of trench warfare.
There are not many leaders who come out well in Tuchman's story. The British leadership, while well meaning, comes off as shrinking in the face of war.Focusing on the first month of the conflict, August 1914, Tuchman's work is not a comprehensive history of the entire war years.
This is a great place to start for those interested in learning about "The Great War." I highly recommend this book.
In Tuchman's rendering, that particular setting of a sun not only brought together the leaders of the world, but with them the values and norms, traditions and legacies of the Old World. With sharp stirring wit, she condemns the generals who thought themselves Gods, and who too readily sacrificed the lives of their soldiers to save their individual honor. There was no looking back, Joffre told the soldiers on the eve. There were the French whose military code dictated that they fight stupidly and bravely. "In scarlet and blue and green and purple, three by three the sovereigns rode through the palace gates, with plumed helmets, gold braid, crimson sashes, and jeweled orders flashing in the sun." Compare these two beautiful and brilliant opening sentences with the book's final paragraph: "After the Marne the war grew and spread until it drew in the nations of both hemispheres and entangled them in a pattern of world conflict no peace treaty could dissolve," Tuchman writes. "The Battle of the Marne was one of the decisive battles of the world not because it determined that Germany would ultimately lose or the Allies ultimately win the war but because it determined that the war would go on. In the opening scene of Barbara Tuchman's "The Guns of August," the language and imagery are as opulent and as stirring as the funeral of England's Edward VII. There were the Germans who fought with efficiency and perversity: they could fanatically maintain their precise timetable and brilliantly organize the chaotic logistics of war, but it was their perverse devotion to their timetable that forced their first blunder, (the invasion of Belgium) a risk they thought they had to take in order to win the war but which ultimately determined that they would lose the war by bringing in Britain and offending the world.
We can easily imagine how she transported herself back to the past, and slowly came to smell, touch, see, and hear the place, the time, and the people. In a world where ego dominated policy and élan determined strategy, cruel and murderous stupidity was the only victor. We can easily see how, while writing the book, she would, in her long silent walks, in her sleep, and even among the chatter of her dinner companions, she would struggle with words, letting them form and gestate in her in a torturous tumultuous tormenting process before becoming refined and solid."The Guns of August" is a literary masterpiece. The nations were caught in a trap, a trap made during the first thirty days out of battles that failed to be decisive, a trap from which there was, and has been, no exit." Gone is the triumphant tone, and what's left is resignation and disillusionment: the First War had destroyed the customs and traditions, norms and values of the Old World, and ever since humanity has been adrift in a brutal and murderous search for a New World. "So gorgeous was the spectacle on the May morning of 1910 when nine kings rode in the funeral of Edward VII of England that the crowd, waiting in hushed and black-clad awe, could not keep bask gasps of admiration," she writes. The Russians were hopelessly incompetent, and the British hopelessly cynical.
Afterward there was no turning back. Gone are the parade and the pageantry, and all that remains now is a cold and hard reality.In the best literary tradition Tuchman writes with conviction and mourning, bitterness and nostalgia, satire and tragedy. This is all established and well-known, and what makes this book a classic is Tuchman's religious devotion to detail and her spiritual obsession with the written word.
I've bought and given 40 copies to friends. This is one of the most commanding books I've ever read. Read it and pray for peace. Who would have thought that the story of World War I would keep you up all night. This is a masterpiece. Pray for leaders who know when to back down in the face of uncertainty. Read it and thank all that came before us to give us our wonderful world.
This is the first book by Tuchman that I read. Barbara T. It was recommended to me by a close friend whose reading choices are full spectrum. I read it cover to cover non-stop. has not only a gift for investigative reporting, a skill critical to historians, but has also a novelist's sense of storytelling. A fine combination that makes history come alive and jump off the page.
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