The guns of August ; : The proud tower

Resource Information

The work The guns of August ; : The proud tower represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Austin Public Library. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

The guns of August ; : The proud tower

Title remainder

The proud tower

Statement of responsibility

Barbara W. Tuchman ; Margaret MacMillan, editor

Title variation

• Barbara W. Tuchman
• Proud tower

Title variation remainder

The guns of August, The proud tower

Creator

• trueTuchman, Barbara W., (Barbara Wertheim), 1912-1989

Contributor

• trueMacMillan, Margaret, 1943-
• trueTuchman, Barbara W., (Barbara Wertheim), 1912-1989

Subject

• Europe
• trueEurope -- History -- 1871-1918
• History
• History, Modern
• trueHistory, Modern -- 20th century
• Military campaigns
• War -- Causes
• Western Front (World War (1914-1918))
• World War (1914-1918)
• World War, 1914-1918 -- Campaigns -- Western Front
• World War, 1914-1918 -- Causes
• 1871 - 1999

Genre

• trueHistory

Language

eng

Summary

• 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."--Dust jacket flap
• "The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914 (1966). [Tuchman] 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.'"--Dust jacket flap

Member of

• Library of America, 222

Cataloging source

BTCTA

Dewey number

940.4144

Illustrations

• illustrations
• maps
• plates

Index

index present

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography

Series statement

The library of America

Series volume

222