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Title: Proud Tower by Barbara W. Tuchman ISBN: 0-345-40501-3 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 27 August, 1996 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.05 (22 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: An Amazing Account
Comment: After taking a course in Western Civilization, I became interested in knowing more about how World War I came about - from what little I had known before, it didn't seem necessary. Barbara Tuchman's beautifully written book reinforces the idea that it wasn't necessary but at the same time it became inevitable.
This book covers the 24 year period just before WWI begins with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand by an anarchist. Such assassinations had occurred a number of times without resulting in war but this time was different. Tuchman guides the reader through all of the cross-currents that built up over those 24 years and shows how a war with Germany became just a matter of when, not whether. Both sides were almost gleeful when they finally had an excuse to touch it off because they were, well, ready.
Tuchman seems to touch all of the bases - the latent anger over the Napoleonic wars in which Prussia had been shown to be impotent after all of its militaristic strutting, the attitude of the Western countries in treating Russia as an unwashed, uncouth giant, the desire of Russia to be treated as an equal, the slow but unstoppable march toward constitutionalism and voting enfranchisement of the middle and lower classes that was touched off by the Enlightenment philosophers and the American and French revolutions, the incredible intellectual inconsistency of the Anarchist and Marxian-Socialist movements who taught that nations didn't count and managed to create an atmosphere of fear among the still largely aristocratic governments and the wealthy and new middle-class, the awakening of expansionist (don't dare call it imperialist) sentiment in the USA, and the rapid rise of the economically and militarily powerful united Germany with its seeming certitude that it was destined to be the greatest among equals. There's a lot more but you get the idea.
Tuchman wrote beautifully and her work acquaints the reader with the humans behind the events and not just those who are commonly met in the history books. The short-coming from my American point of view is that she doesn't really show how powerful the USA was becoming vis a vie the European powers or why it was likely that the USA would enter the "European War." Perhaps she covered that in "The Guns of August" that I have not yet read. The end of the war didn't really end it - would it have been more likely or less likely to restart if the USA had not entered the war? To me she seemed to have the typical bias of the British conservatives toward the rest of the world and I was surprised to find out as I was writing this that she was American. In any event she was a truly great recorder of history with a daunting ability to absorb and relate vast amounts of information. Well worth reading.
Rating: 5
Summary: The Lights are Going Out all over Europe
Comment: WE shall not see them lighted again in our lifetime" Lord Grey..I have loved the writer since "The Guns of August". This history of the era up to the beginning of the Great War is readable, accurate, and fascinating. Ms. Tuchman makes the personalities come alive with their strengths and their foibles. I have never read anything better about the headlong, reckless, and perhaps, inevitable rush to engage the great powers of Europe in a war that would kill the brightest and best of a whole generation and eventually lead to the collapse of European world hedgemony. A must read!
Rating: 3
Summary: brilliant, captivating but ultimately without a point
Comment: Barbara W. Tuchman's "The Proud Tower" is overly ambitious undertaking, even for the author of the "Guns of August". To present in a single, however voluminous book, a social, economic, cultural and artistic history of the golden age of "fin du siècle" Europe and to do this in a brilliant popular style open to anyone is a masterful undertaking.
"The proud tower" starts with social history of upper class Victorians of the later age of Salisbury, thought the Dreyfus Affair which split the social consciousness of France to age of Balfour, Edwardians and realization of the German threat. Parallel track in a book deals with the rise of anarchism and Marxism throughout the Europe and USA, development of those ideas which eventually gave rise to both European socialism and the menace of Bolshevism.
The best parts of the book, in my opinion, are the drama of the Dreyfus Affair and the description of the late Victorian epoch. The history of Marxism is not clear, muddled, and is not helped by the author omitting significant historical facts. Logically it does not follow thought why people acted the way they acted in political protest. The book might've been helped by following thought with just a single out of 2 main narrative lines - political history of the upper classes or the social history of the lower classes. As written it does not make a single central point, and as such lost my attention at the end.
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Title: Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman ISBN: 034538623X Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 08 March, 1994 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Zimmermann Telegram by Barbara W. Tuchman ISBN: 0345324250 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 12 March, 1985 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara W. Tuchman ISBN: 0345349571 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 12 July, 1987 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Bible and Sword : England and Palestine from the Bronze Age to Balfour by Barbara W. Tuchman ISBN: 0345314271 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 12 February, 1984 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: The March of Folly : From Troy to Vietnam by Barbara W. Tuchman ISBN: 0345308239 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 12 February, 1985 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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