August 1914 (1962)

Barbara Tuchman er fær penni og einstaklega lagið að gera sögulega atburði ljóslifandi og hrífandi fyrir augum lesandans. Tuchman fjallar í bókinni um aðdragandann að styrjöldinni og fyrstu mánuði hennar, allt þar til Bretum og Frökkum tekst að stöðva sókn Þjóðverja í Frakklandi í grennd við París.
Guns of August er sennilega ein þekktasta bók hennar og er talin á meðal sígildra sagnfræðirita um fyrri heimsstyrjöldina. Fyrir hana fékk hún Pulitzer verðlaunin og gerði sagnfræðirit um fyrri heimsstyrjöldina að metsölubók. Óþekkt fram til þessa að ég held en bókin var kom fyrst út 1962.
Sagan er sögð hafa haft svo mikil áhrif á John F. Kennedy bandaríkjaforseta að hann gaf ráðherrum ríkisstjórnar sinnar og helstu hernaðarráðgjöfum eintak og skipaði þeim að lesa hana.
Um leið og persónulýsingar hennar eru skemmtilegar og litríkar þá verður að segjast að Tuchman er barn sinnar kynslóðar og í hennar frásögu er einstaklingar drifkraftur sögunnar og orsakavaldar. Síðar hafa sagnfræðingar meir horft á samfélagið sem heild og einstaklingar hafa ekki verið gerðir jafn miklir örlagavaldar. Tuchman hefur sömuleiðis verið gagnrýnd af fræðimönnum fyrir ónákvæmni við sagnfræðiúrvinnslu. Uppi stendur þó heillandi frásögn sem hver áhugamaður um sagnfræði og fyrri heimsstyrjöldina ætti ekki að láta fram hjá sér fara. ( )

Have this as book and audio ( )

I let go at around page 280 (out of 440 in my edition), when I started realizing that every paragraph is so chunked up with minute details about this general moving these troops out of this place and into this wing on this day because of these emotions and this miscommunication and this people's overconfidence that it just all became so trivial and so unbelievably lifeless--which in a weird way completely contradicts all of the GR reviews I've read about how this book brings life to the first month of the war. I also think the writing just slowly, gradually became less and less vigorous and more rote as the war left its initial stages and moved to the actual fighting of month 1.

I realized I didn't want to finish this book when it struck me that it's all just pointless military maneuvers, some of them more successful than others, almost all of them led by a bunch of overconfident idiots, and that I had nothing to gain from learning about these dumb poops and their meaningless military decisions.

I actually really liked the first part of the book, and liked the second part. It was the third part, "Battle", that just gutted me with its unbelievable tediousness. And I hate giving up on books, but there are only so many free seconds in my life to dedicate to things I don't enjoy. ( )

The Senselessness Of War

Barbara Tuchman's classic history of the first month of World War I recounts the way nationalistic bravado and unrealistic expectations about quick victory enmeshed the world in savage bloodshed in August of 1914. Any story of the first half of the Twentieth Century would provide these facts, but Tuchman's work gives particularly sharp insight into the minds and characters of the men who made the fateful decisions to go to war and to continue the carnage.

Parallels with later leaders and later wars are inevitable, and probably the best reason for making the book required reading. The most stunning fact, to me, is that, despite the interminable years of deadly trench warfare that followed the events of August, the crushing economics of the cost of the war, and the millions of dead, Europe was back at it again twenty years later.

One of the great works of historical scholarship. ( )

World War I was almost certainly the stupidest and most unnecessary war in history. Tuchman's decision to focus on the psychologies of the rulers involved in this farcical atrocity is brilliant, as it can only be truly understood by showing just how vain, ignorant, and blustering the rulers of the world were. Her prose is engrossing and even playful, so perceptive in explaining how the inevitable human failures in the slow slide towards war ratcheted towards the point of no return that this may be the only history to ever prevent a nuclear armageddon, as John F Kennedy reached back for its insights on negotiations and ultimatums during the doom-laden days of the Cuban Missile Crisis. It's not a complete military history as it ends only a few months into the war, but as she so eloquently shows, once the grim logic of entangling alliances began to turn on the gears of folly and hubris, the rest of the war was merely predictable death and waste, as inevitable as it was once thought unthinkable. ( )