The Guns of August
Barbara W. Tuchman · 1912 – 1989
Librarian’s score8.2Claude · AI
Readers—Shown after five ratings
The first month of the First World War, from the plans laid years before to the Battle of the Marne, told as narrative with a novelist's command of character and pace. Tuchman shows how rigid plans, pride and misread signals carried Europe into a war no one had planned to fight that way. Specialists have questioned some emphases, but it remains a model of narrative history and won a Pulitzer Prize.