- Mass Market Paperback: 640 pages
- Publisher: Presidio Press; Reprint edition (Aug 2004)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0345476093
- ISBN-13: 978-0345476098
- Product Dimensions: 17.3 x 10.7 x 2.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 119,968 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
"More dramtatic than fiction...THE GUNS OF AUGUST is a magnificent narrative--beautifully organized, elegantly phrased, skillfully paced and sustained....The product of painstaking and sophisticated research."
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Barbara Tuchman has brought to life again the people and events that led up to Worl War I. With attention to fascinating detail, and an intense knowledge of her subject and its characters, Ms. Tuchman reveals, for the first time, just how the war started, why, and why it could have been stopped but wasn't. A classic historical survey of a time and a people we all need to know more about, THE GUNS OF AUGUST will not be forgotten.
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Barbara Tuchman has brought to life again the people and events that led up to Worl War I. With attention to fascinating detail, and an intense knowledge of her subject and its characters, Ms. Tuchman reveals, for the first time, just how the war started, why, and why it could have been stopped but wasn't. A classic historical survey of a time and a people we all need to know more about, THE GUNS OF AUGUST will not be forgotten.
About the Author
Barbara W. Tuchman achieved prominence as a historian with The Zimmermann Telegram and international fame with The Guns of August, which won the Pulitzer Prize. There followed five more books: The Proud Tower, Stilwell and the American Experience in China (also awarded the Pulitzer Prize), A Distant Mirror, Practicing History, and The March of Folly. The First Salute was Mrs. Tuchman’s last book before her death in February 1989.
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First Sentence
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 back gasps of admiration. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
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 back gasps of admiration. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Barbara Tuchman's account of the 30 days of August 1914 can be viewed as a prism of events before and after this pivotal month at the start of the WW1. There are many views as to whether this War was an inevitable manifestation of tottering monarchies, deadly new technology, colonial rivalry and and the still very prevalent romance and chivalry associated with War. WW1 forever debased that latter notion, but sadly did not put an end to war. Although this can be read as a stand alone piece it is better put in the perspective of it's precedent, the war itself and its aftermath. John Keegan's new study 'World War One' is highly recommended, and perhaps Clausewitz's classic study of causes and tactics 'On War'. Tuchman does not present an ideological or chauvinistic perspective. Her strength is in her objective narrative rendering, and her character insights, including the llumination of some lesser known figures who played a key roll in events. Excellent, readable history with the drama and immediacy of a novel. You'll have trouble putting it down.
23 of 24 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The Guns of August is the fourth Barbara Tuchman book I have read and is a masterwork of historical writing. I learned in school that the Archduke Ferdinand was shot in Sarajevo and then all these countries went to war because they had secret treaties. Tuchman tells the real story from the opening chapter of the Funeral of Edward VII (with the array of kings and princes, such as have never been assembled since) through the incredible stupidity of the war planners (on all sides of the conflict) to the final days of the first month of the war. The personal and political and familial and military relationships are so clearly defined that the scenes described take on a vivid life. This is an excllent book, a great undertaking that has awakened me to the fact that war itself made a drastic and horrible turn in 1914 from which the world has not yet recovered. There had always been horror associated with war, despite the language of honor, but the technology changed and the tactics that made the massacre of civilians a shocking event that resonated around the world are now accepted procedures for all combatants, including US troops. The well of melancholy that lies beneath the military history is almost underplayed in Tuchman's treatise. But it is there and painfully real - we have yet to withdraw from the savagery that once humans could not imagine. This book is as relevant today as it was when it was written and as the story was when it happened.
19 of 20 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Like another review I stumbled across this book having read Robert Kennedy's account of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 13 Days. JFK was reading The Guns of August at the time (it being published in 1962/63). Having read both one can see why JFK 'recommended' it. With remarkable yet accessible detail Tuchman constructs the events leading up to the outbreak of War and the chaotic first month. Where she succeeds (to my ill educated view) is in capturing the political and geopolitical issues surrounding the decisions to go to War- the Gronau's dash to include Turkey on the Axis side, the school playground posturing of the then Superpowers, the French persuading Russia to mobilise despite the latter being hopelessly ill prepared for operations. Writing about war should never be a trivialised undertaking and Tuchman triumphs in the information delivery and tone of her writing. It reads like a novel but the final pages, listing the abominable waste of life brings stark and saddening reality crashing home. I think JFK saw how possible it would have been to bring the world to war- as in 1914 and how escalation follows escalation until there is no other option available. It is fitting that the seminal BBC documentary series The Great War was, in part, inspired by this book.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
A Sublime Audiobook
I got this without being sure I'd enjoy it. I've listened to hours of it, riveted by the account of how the First World War began. Read more
Published 7 months ago by William Cohen
Guns of August
An excellent account of the opening battles of World War One. The book deserved all the praise it received in the past and is still deserving of the highest acclaim despite the 50... Read more
Published 9 months ago by quarante-deux
The Guns of August
This book is a highly readable account of the beginning of World War One. Tuchman brings to life the tumultuous and tenuous state of Europe in 1914 which erupted into the "Great... Read more
Published on 19 April 2006 by abush3
History written as a novel
This is a fascinating and highly readable book. Tuchman creates her characters very fully, the plot is fast moving and well structured, the scenes well drawn. Read more
Published on 4 Jan 2006 by PC
The best!
Rightly considered one of the greatest books on the beginning of World War I, this book won Barbara Tuchman (1912-89) her first Pulitzer Prize. Read more
Published on 1 Jun 2005 by Kurt A. Johnson
The best!
Rightly considered one of the greatest books on the beginning of World War I, this book won Barbara Tuchman (1912-89) her first Pulitzer Prize. Read more
Published on 25 May 2005 by Kurt A. Johnson
Neither insightful nor entertaining
I approached this book with high expectations due to the rave reviews it has received but I was disappointed. Read more
Published on 26 Mar 2003
Spectacular, awesome - THE book on the events up 1914
I read this book after AJP Taylor's "Struggle for Mastery in Europe", Edmund Taylor's "Fall of the Dynasties" and Robert Massey's "Dreadnought" - and... Read more
Published on 18 April 2002 by J. C. Okonkwo
40 years on, but still evergreen
This is not a work of fiction, as described in the information. It is well worth reading as a story, albeit true. Read more
Published on 9 Oct 2001 by leirrog@wanadoo.fr
The best insight of the psychology for winning or defeat.
Barbara does a superb job linking the realities of the war with the psychological aspects behind the Kaiser and France decisions. Read more
Published on 11 Sep 2001 by Milton Bertin Jones
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