The guns of August - Barbara W Tuchman

Writing with a clarity, grace, and novelistic sweep rare among
historians, Barbara W. Tuchman (1912-1989) distilled the complex
interplay of personalities and events into gripping narratives that
fuse rigorous scholarship with elegant literary art. An astute
portraitist, she brilliantly laid bare the all-too-human failures of
leaders subject to the pull of historical currents and prone, often
tragically, to the ingrained biases of culture and temperament. Her
Pulitzer Prize-winning best seller The Guns of August (1962)
offers a majestic orchestration of the diplomatic and military history
of the crucial first weeks of World War I. Tuchman's observations about
the irrational escalation of conflict made a deep impression on
President John F. Kennedy and influenced his actions during the Cuban
Missile Crisis; fifty years later, The Guns of August remains an
exemplary study of events propelled headlong by their own internal
logic and momentum. Some of Tuchman's finest writing is contained in
her following book, The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World before the War, 1890-1914 (1966), a fascinating kaleidoscope of eight
precisely drawn essays on subjects ranging from international socialism
and anarchism to the Dreyfus Affair in France and the birth of American
imperialism that collectively set the stage for the cataclysm of 1914.
Presented in one volume for the first time and released to mark
Tuchman's centennial year and the fiftieth anniversary of the
publication of The Guns of August, here is a vivid, indelible
panorama of an epoch in transition.

LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.