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The Guns of August

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The Guns of August

By: Barbara W. Tuchman
Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon
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In this Pulitzer Prize-winning classic, historian Barbara Tuchman brings to life the people and events that led up to World War I. This was the last gasp of the Gilded Age, of Kings and Kaisers and Czars, of pointed or plumed hats, colored uniforms, and all the pomp and romance that went along with war. How quickly it all changed...and how horrible it became.

Tuchman masterfully portrays this transition from 19th to 20th Century, focusing on the turning point in the year 1914: the month leading up to the war and the first month of the war. With fine attention to detail, she reveals how and why the war started, and why it could have been stopped but wasn't, managing to make the story utterly suspenseful even when we already know the outcome.

©1990 Dr. Lester Tuchman; (P)2005 Blackstone Audio, Inc. 20th Century Military Modern World War Imperialism Royalty Russia Middle Ages Imperial Japan Interwar Period
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Critic reviews

"More dramatic than fiction...a magnificent narrative - beautifully organized, elegantly phrased, skillfully paced...The product of painstaking and sophisticated research." (Chicago Tribune)
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loved this. great characterisations. beautifully read with the right amount of panache and gravity as required

Brilliant

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Well written and narrated of the prelude to and first stages of the First World War.

Excellent historical analysis

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Tuchman’s magisterial accounting of the beginnings of the First World War, while not an exhaustive scholarly study, is brilliant and compelling, at times absurd and hilarious and at others deadly serious. The myriad faults of mankind are laid out in the comedy of errors that was the Schlieffen Plan and the ill-conceived Plan XVIi- all masterfully narrated by Wanda McCaddon, whose voice is so pleasing that I have relistened to this work four times and I still adore it. Cannot recommend highly enough.

Narrative History At Its Finest

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I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get lost in the middle with all the names, but I found it an interesting book and enjoyed ze accents.

Very Interesting

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Reading a lot of newer books on ww1 I've often heard Tuchmans Guns of August referenced.

In many ways this is the main book on that first month.

Now I finally got round to it and I was not dissapointed. This is truly a masterpiece. That's all there is to it.

Very enjoyable.

A great boon

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