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Among contemporary historians Barbara Tuchman stands supreme. - The Times Few historians, if any, write as well as Barbara Tuchman. - J H Plumb Admirers of her earlier works will find Barbara Tuchman's familiar virtues on display. She is lucid, painstaking and highly intelligent. She is also highly expert. Sunday Times
Product Description
From the distinguished American historian whose work has been acclaimed around the world, a major new book that penetrates one of the most bizarre and fascinating paradoxes in history: the persistent pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own intersts. Across the march of thirty centuries, Tuchman brings to life the dramatic events which constitute folly's hallmark in government; the fall of Troy, symbolic prototype of freely chosen disaster; the Protestant secession, provoked by six decades of spectacularly corrupt papcy; the British forfeiture of the American colonies; and America's catastrophic thirty year involvement with vietnam.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A lesson for leaders and the blindly led,
By
This review is from: The March Of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam (Paperback)
I read this book with great interest, not simply as a history book, but as describing an aspect of mankind familiar to all, the ability to act in a way contrary to any possible self-interest. If you define wisdom as `the exercise of judgement acting on experience, common sense and available information', it is clear we often behave in the opposite fashion, and Barbara Tuchman identifies this trait, folly, with the characteristic rejection of reason, as all too common in government policy and elsewhere today. She quotes Plato, `when desire disagrees with the judgement of reason, there is a disease of the soul, and when the soul is opposed knowledge..that I call folly'.
The three historical examples she explores in detail are, the Renaissance popes provoking the Protestant secession, the American War of Independence, and the Vietnam War. Each of these accounts, is, in my view, the work of a mature, reflective historian, not simply recounting facts, or dry history, but discerning lessons and meaning for us, in the light of `those who cannot learn from the past are condemned to repeat it' (George Santayana).
16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Lessons for our times,
By Dag Bennett (BLOOMINGTON, IN, US) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The March Of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam (Paperback)
This is a really important work about how societies can screw up. It details major examples of leaderships who despite all evidence to the contrary, take decisions that go against their own self interest. Tuchman starts with several small examples of leaders making bad decisions, focussing on the Trojan decision to bring the Greek horse inside the walls instead of leaving it to bake on the shore, or burning it--both viable options. Tuchman explores the reasons why the Trojans did the riskiest thing they could, including ignoring the evidence, fooling themselves, believing in their own superiority, and their fatedness to win through. She then shows how modern societies are capable of similar follies. The chapters on how the United States betrayed itself in Viet Nam is particularly pertinent today as the country entagles itself in Iraq. This is not a perfect book in that it does not offer prescriptions to avoid bad decision-making. But there is a great deal to be learned from it, and that I think is the great contribution she makes, she doesn't just tell us what happened, but helps us to see and avoid the pitfalls we may face. I highly recommend it.
18 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Desperately disappointing,
By
This review is from: The March Of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam (Paperback)
I read this book (or tried to), having just finished Tuchmans "Guns of August", which is I believe the best book ever written on World War I.This book is desperately disappointing. Firstly, the manner is less enthusiastic, and more detached - presumably, a change in personality 20 years after the Guns of August and due to old age. Secondly, the interweaving of comment and fact is both poorly delivered and awkward. There is no drive to the prose, which is classic "grandstanding". Thirdly, the topic itself is not sufficient to hold interest longer than a magazine article, and with today's shorter attention span, inevitably, is of less interest. I would not recommend this book - read Tuchman at her younger, brilliant best in Guns of August. This ones a distant echo.
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