Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #185610 in Books
• Published on: 2004-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 640 pages

Customer Reviews

This is an exceptional historical read.
The Guns of August is the fourth Barbara Tuchman book I have read and is a masterwork of historical writing. I learned in school that the Archduke Ferdinand was shot in Sarajevo and then all these countries went to war because they had secret treaties. Tuchman tells the real story from the opening chapter of the Funeral of Edward VII (with the array of kings and princes, such as have never been assembled since) through the incredible stupidity of the war planners (on all sides of the conflict) to the final days of the first month of the war. The personal and political and familial and military relationships are so clearly defined that the scenes described take on a vivid life. This is an excllent book, a great undertaking that has awakened me to the fact that war itself made a drastic and horrible turn in 1914 from which the world has not yet recovered. There had always been horror associated with war, despite the language of honor, but the technology changed and the tactics that made the massacre of civilians a shocking event that resonated around the world are now accepted procedures for all combatants, including US troops. The well of melancholy that lies beneath the military history is almost underplayed in Tuchman's treatise. But it is there and painfully real - we have yet to withdraw from the savagery that once humans could not imagine. This book is as relevant today as it was when it was written and as the story was when it happened.

40 years on, but still evergreen
This is not a work of fiction, as described in the information. It is well worth reading as a story, albeit true. The author has a wonderful sense of the period; pen descriptions of the main characters are succinct and superb. For a detailed narrative of the first month of WW1 it is eminently readable. Well worth an investment for the student of this period.

A magnificent book
Like another review I stumbled across this book having read Robert Kennedy's account of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 13 Days. JFK was reading The Guns of August at the time (it being published in 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 and the chaotic first month. Where she succeeds (to my ill educated view) is in capturing the political and 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 and Tuchman triumphs in the information delivery and tone of her writing. It reads like a novel but the final pages, listing the abominable waste of life brings stark and saddening reality crashing home. I think JFK saw how possible it would have been to bring the world to war- as in 1914 and 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.