The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Guns of August
Book Review: Jay
Summary: 3 Stars
Book arrived in very timely manner, price was right and in good condition. It is in the queue for reading.Book Review: Jewish author with a distinct anti-german bias - but a good read
Summary: 3 Stars
I just finished this book and enjoyed reading it EXCEPT when the author's very distinct anti-german sentiments come out in full force. She calls the germans many many names in this book and depicts them as just plain evil - evil. I read the author's biography and noted she was jewish which may explain this slant. The book was enjoyable - well written with the BIG exception that it is very one sided and the author's contempt for the German race comes out in full force here and there. It wasn't deserving of a pultitzer prize at all.Book Review: Masterfully written and researched - required reading for any student of 20th century history
Summary: 5 Stars
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.
Book Review: One of the best, one of the shortest.
Summary: 5 Stars
The month preceding, and the first month or so of, World War I. Should be required reading. IS required reading for all who want a glimmer of an idea as to how and why we get ourselves entangled in things such as war. Hard to put down, impossible to forget. Read it.Book Review: Pure Propaganda
Summary: 1 Stars
This book is little more than recycled propaganda from about 1915.But it is viciously anti-German and that is enough to make it a "classic".Truly one of the great hate books of all time.Germanophobia sells,always has and probably always will.Something for you aspiring historians to keep in mind.
If you want to know how WWI really started,read Harry Elmer Barnes or Sidney Fay.