The Guns of August
By Barbara W. Tuchman
With a diamond-cutter’s sharp vision and deft touch,
Barbara Tuchman crafted a small but nearly perfect gem of
twentieth-century history. Starting with the state funeral
of England’s King Edward VII in May 1910 – attended
by many who would play a pivotal role in the coming disaster – Tuchman
chronicles the historical forces and outsized personalities
that would converge, in the summer of 1914, to drag a dozen
countries and millions of fighting men into the First World
War…and lay the seeds for the Second. Forty years after
its publication, The Guns of August is as gripping as any
thriller, its characters as real and compelling as those
in a truly great novel. At the start of a new century, in
a world plagued by seething regional conflicts, this book
reminds us how easy it is to slip, without ever intending
to, into the abyss of war. Christine Kane
©Copyright 2008 Libretto,
Inc. |
