Customer Reviews
The Guns of August - By: victory3, 19 Apr 2006 
This book is a highly readable account of the beginning of World War One. Tuchman brings to life the tumultuous & tenuous state of Europein 1914 which erupted into the "Great War". I do recommend reading this book with Geoffrey Wawro's excellent short history of the Franco-Prussian War(the war that preceeded WW1) for a better historical perspective.
History written as a novel - By: PC, 05 Jan 2006 This is a fascinating & highly readable book. Tuchman creates her characters very fully, the plot is fast moving & well structured, the scenes well drawn. This would be a good novel except that it's history! A frightening essayin how politicians & generals can get it terribly wrong. Whether or not you agree with Tuchman's conclusion that what happened between mid-August & mid-September 1914 set the direction of world history for the rest of the century, she makes a formidable case. Anyone interestedin history or politics should read this book.
The best! - By: Kurt A. Johnson, 01 Jun 2005 Rightly considered one of the greatest books on the beginning of World War I, this book won Barbara Tuchman (1912-89) her first Pulitzer Prize. Beginning with the funeral of the British King, Edward VII (1841-1910), the author unfolds European events that led to the Great War & shows how it happened & why. Containing many black-and-white pictures, the storytelling is handledin a wonderfully engrossing manner, almost reading like a novel. The story continues, with all of its horrible mistakes & miscalculations, to the Battle of the Marne, which stopped the German march to Paris.
Overall, I found this to be a great history book, certainly the best I have ever read on World War I. It's easy to see why this book is so respected. Indeed, I believe that for many generations into the future, this book will be considered a classic on that war.
So, if you are interestedin the First World War, & want to read a great book on it, then I highly recommend this book to you. I give it my highest recommendations.
The best! - By: Kurt A. Johnson, 25 May 2005 Rightly considered one of the greatest books on the beginning of World War I, this book won Barbara Tuchman (1912-89) her first Pulitzer Prize. Beginning with the funeral of the British King, Edward VII (1841-1910), the author unfolds European events that led to the Great War & shows how it happened & why. Containing many black-and-white pictures, the storytelling is handledin a wonderfully engrossing manner, almost reading like a novel. The story continues, with all of its horrible mistakes & miscalculations, to the Battle of the Marne, which stopped the German march to Paris.
Overall, I found this to be a great history book, certainly the best I have ever read on World War I. It's easy to see why this book is so respected. Indeed, I believe that for many generations into the future, this book will be considered a classic on that war.
So, if you are interestedin the First World War, & want to read a great book on it, then I highly recommend this book to you. I give it my highest recommendations.
A magnificent book - By: , 17 Apr 2003 Like another review I stumbled across this book having read Robert Kennedy's account of the Cuban Missile Crisisin 13 Days. JFK was reading The Guns of August at the time (it being publishedin 1962/63). Having read both one can see why JFK 'recommended' it. With remarkable yet accessible detail Tuchman constructs the events leading up to the outbreak of War & the chaotic first month. Where she succeeds (to my ill educated view) isin capturing the political & geopolitical issues surrounding the decisions to go to War- the Gronau's dash to include Turkey on the Axis side, the school playground posturing of the then Superpowers, the French persuading Russia to mobilise despite the latter being hopelessly ill prepared for operations. Writing about war should never be a trivialised undertaking & Tuchman triumphsin the information delivery & tone of her writing. It reads like a novel but the final pages, listing the abominable waste of life brings stark & saddening reality crashing home. I think JFK saw how possible it would have been to bring the world to war- asin 1914 & how escalation follows escalation until there is no other option available. It is fitting that the seminal BBC documentary series The Great War was,in part, inspired by this book.
