'The Guns of August' by Barbara Tuchman
[Cross-posting latest book summary I put out on LinkedIn.]
The Guns of August (http://www.amzn.com/0345476093) is a book I've been meaning to read for quite a while and finally did. It is approaching the 50th anniversary of its acclaimed publication and its subject, the start of World War I, will have its centennial in a few years. (I suspect there will be many new commemorations as we approach that anniversary.)In any case, the book is beautifully written by Barbara Tuchman and gave me a much better understanding of one of the great inflection points in modern history. Beyond the tragedy of the war itself (over 16 million dead), the arc of the rest of the 20th century was spawned or hastened by the results of this war and the peace treaty which followed. In a sense, Tuchman's organization of the book mirrors this ripple effect as she only focuses on the lead up to the conflict in Germany, France, England and Russia and then the first month of hostilities, where the momentum of pre-determined grand strategies mixed with specific choices and vacillations by variously flawed leaders and the effect of contingent events dictated the course of the rest of the war with its years of stalemate and killing.It's seems hard to believe now that governments and their citizens could have so grossly miscalculated the length and severity of the war as they entered into it. Of course, this sort of failure in perception is not unique. Countries, companies and people do it all the time, just rarely with such fateful consequences.
