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The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914 |  | Author: Barbara W. Tuchman
Brand: Random House
Category: Book
List Price: $18.00
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Seller: goodwill_industries_san_francisco
Rating:  42 reviews
Sales Rank: 50458
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st Ballantine Books
Pages: 544
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.6 x 1.3
MPN: 9780345405012
ISBN: 0345405013
Dewey Decimal Number: 909.82
EAN: 9780345405012
ASIN: 0345405013
Publication Date: August 27, 1996
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
THE PROUD TOWER by Barbara Tuchman examines the Western World of approximately 100 years ago. Technologically the world was a very different from today, but the strifes between economic groups and among nations bears many similarities to our own time. Tuchman examines the economic, social, political, and technological world of the period 1890-1914. By this period, the United States had become an important player in world affairs. The Haymarket Affair in Chicago fueled the development of international anarchism which led to the assasinations of political figures in Russia, Italy, France and lastly President McKinley in the United States. Recommended in Laura Berquist U.S. History Geography and American Literature Author: Barbara W. TuchmanFormat: 544 pages, PaperbackPublisher: Ballantine Books 1st Ballantine Books edition (August 27, 1996) ISBN: 978-0345405012
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 42
 A towering bore of a book July 27, 2010
Calochortus (San Luis Obispo, CA)
Loved her books on the middle ages, Stilwell and WWI, but this one seems to have missed the mark widely. Too much scene-setting, it's largely a disjointed series of biographies, with flowery and overblown prose. "Enough already." I keep saying.
 Pictures before the Exhibition May 16, 2010
Ryan James Tutak (Birmingham, MI, USA)
Tuchman debunks a consensus in beliefs after WWI idealizing life before the war by reframing snapshots of conflicts in beliefs before WWI still afflicting life after the war: "A phenomenon of such extended malignance as the Great War does not come out of a Golden Age."
agrarian to industrial convulsions March 28, 2010
Carol Grosser (San Antonio, TX United States)
Having a father who fought in WWI, I have always been curious about this war. I had read before that it was the struggle against monarchies and the result of monarchal interrelations. However, Barbara Tuchman's book makes a lot more sense in her relating of everything going on at the time, the beginnings of industrialism and the end of the land-based agrarian civilization. Thus, the book is pertinent for all of us today because, unless some energy miracle comes along, we are now living through the reverse process, i.e., loss of cheap energy to fuel the industrialism of our culture. It is rather frightening in that Europe in its throes of upheaval had to war to deliver the new ideology of factory not farm and I read most of the male population of Europe was killed. If such births of new ethos have to be bought with war in the human psyche, then now with nuclear war a possibility it is pretty terrifying. Perhaps with a careful study of this work, we might learn to birth cultural and societal changes without warfare. This is a work of genius such that I hope to read all her works so that I can get a clearer picture of history.
This book is revelatory as well in political analysis relating all the mainstream political and economic ideas still current within in our world and swirling with controversy, i.e., political mingled with economic ideas, libertarianism, democracy, socialism, liberalism, conservatism, unregulated capitalism, and regulated capitalism, and mixtures of all. It is also the beginning of literacy through financed education and taxation of property and land--all the requirements to build and maintain an industrial civilization. And, alas, it is also the beginnings of literacy and a educated populace more interested in titillation and spectator sports than figuring out a better world.
This book is so full of genius it really has to be read several times and should be required study for anyone watching us move from industrialism to some form of new culture, perhaps even a return to an exclusively agrarian society in some form.
Enlightening but ultimately diffuse April 7, 2009
S. Henderson (Hazlet, New Jersey USA)
Just finished this because my next book, THE GUNS OF AUGUST, falls right into place. I'm new to Tuchman but found the essays here to be interesting but ultimately a better windup would've helped. The years leading up to WWI were anything but peaceful: labor unrest, shifting class power, artistic shockers (interestingly, Picasso is given only one line)and, of course, the Dreyfus Affair are accorded rather longish chapters. One can argue about the subjects picked to illustrate changes rarely given much thought in the classroom but taken together, Tuchman demonstrates ably that this period was a pressure cooker ready to blow and, of course, it did but not as a result of any one of these events. So, it's a bit dissatisfying as a prelude to the war but interesting nonetheless. Was hoping for more focus. Hope GUNS is better.
A classic history of the years leading up to World War I October 9, 2008
R. Vosburg (Anaheim, CA USA)
Barbara Tuchman's books on World War I are classics and ought to be on the shelves of anyone who is a student of History for the time period prior to and during World War I. The price is terrific considering what I first paid for this book in hardbound copy when it came out.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 42
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