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The Guns of August | 
 enlarge | Author: Barbara W. Tuchman
Publisher: Presidio Press
Category: Book
List Price: $7.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  157 reviews
Sales Rank: 3561
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 640
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 6.7 x 4.2 x 1.3
ISBN: 0345476093
Dewey Decimal Number: 940.4144
EAN: 9780345476098
ASIN: 0345476093
Publication Date: August 3, 2004
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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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 152 more reviews...
 Worst summer reading I ever had July 24, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I didn't even bother to finish this book because, although i tried to read it and fell asleep on pretty much every other page, the writing was convoluted and stuffy, the "action" (was there any?) was slow, and I just couldn't bring myself to care about anything this author had to say. A unanimous vote by the AP Euro class I was forced to "read" this for took the book off the reading list for next year's class...although we would have loved to make the following classes suffer the same way we did, we simply could not bring ourselves to stuff this ridiculous book down any other poor students' throats.
Mr. M......You were a cool teacher, but I don't know if I can ever forgive you for letting this haunt my entire summer.
 Brilliant Easy to Read Narrative July 3, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The Guns of August is an easy to read and flowing history of the early days of World War I. The author does a great job a bringing you up to speed with the state of mind for each of the major players in the early days of the war. The book then moves more or less chronologically through the eve of Marne in great detail. I also like that the author does not take sides. For example, she presents the horrific treatment of Belgium civilians in a matter of fact way but still drives home the terribleness of those actions. The only deficiency (unless this missed it in the notes and sources) is the lack of complete translations for the large number of French phrases used in the book; some of the more obscure are translated but not all. A good English-French dictionary comes in handy.
 Classic for a Reason June 1, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
There is absolutely a reason for this book to be regarded as a classic. Actually, there are lots of reasons. Tuchman's writing is informative, yet intimate. She tells you what you need to know to understand the topic at hand then goes on to supply more information that you didn't need but adds to your appreciation. All this without the book ever bogging down, unlike the war. Possibly, a big part of this is the topic she chose to cover from WWI, the first month. That was when armies marched, counter-marched and fought instead of slogging through mud for years.
Tuchman covers the cuases for war in ways as good as any I've read. It's a hard topic, but she addresses it very well. Every topic in the book is covered well.
This book is a must read for anyone interested in the Great War. It's also a must read to get some understanding of how the folly of man makes war more horrofic, if that's possible. It's just a good read if you're looking for something for the beach.
Masterfully written and researched - required reading for any student of 20th century history May 20, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
In The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman successfully brings to life the political climate of the early 20th century, how the great European powers of the time had been planning for war with their rivals for very nearly a century, since the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Each country had a different war plan, but all of them were more or less variations on a theme - our glorious soldiers will be mobilized, will take the field against our enemies, will crush our enemies in battle, then will march triumphantly into the enemy's capital city!
Perhaps never before had belligerent nations gone to war with such hubris and ignorance of the true horrors of war. Many of the powers assumed that the upcoming war would be waged much as the Crimean War and the Franco-Prussian wars had been fought, where gallant sweeping cavaly charges would be the order of the day. The power of the machine gun and the development of accurate, rapid-firing artillery would render all previous battle tactics obsolete overnight.
However, in the first month of this terrible new war, the warring generals couldn't adjust to these new facts. They kept sending thousands upon thousands of men to their deaths in the months before trench warfare became commonplace. The disastrous Battle of the Frontiers (which appears in very few history books in comparison to the Somme and Verdun) is told in heartbreaking detail on how the brightly-clad French soldiers (with their blue coats and bright red pants) marched into the muzzles of German machine guns and died, by the hundreds and thousands, because their commanding generals couldn't comprehend the new, much deadlier, face of war.
The best example of incompetence, war fever, rigid planning, and fear leading down a very dark path. Should be required reading April 30, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
This book describes one of the most incredible examples where rigidity of thinking and planning led to events spiraling totally out of control. It also demonstrates how it is a very rare occasion that the consequences of a war are anywhere close to the belief of the people that started it. Although the events of 1914 were almost a century ago, this has been demonstrated once again by the American invasion of Iraq.
When Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated at Sarajevo on June 28, 1914 no one considered it be a major crisis. When the blustering started among the leadership of the European nations, the common belief was that it would all be resolved. However, as Tuchman describes in such excellent detail the rigid nature of the plans and the fear of being preempted led everyone to the same conclusion, "all out war as soon as possible." Personal relationships no longer mattered, most of the members of the royal families were closely related, yet that only slowed the process slightly.
When the juggernaut of war started to sprout, it was also fed by the frenzy of the masses, nearly all of whom cheered lustily for war. Few stopped to question what was happening and those that did were easily brushed aside. Or in the case of the French Socialist leader Jaures, assassinated. For the moment, militaristic and nationalistic fervor swept the continent and only the blood of millions of men was able to wash it away.
This book should be read and reread by any person who aspires to national leadership of a nation. I have heard that American President Kennedy had read this book and that is one of the reasons why he stayed so controlled during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Once you read it, you will understand that what appear to be simple events can be escalated by a series of mistakes, all of which would in isolation be small. The rush for war can be a powerful one and as the American presence in Iraq demonstrates once again, a miscalculation regarding a war can be a very costly thing indeed.
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