Guns of August

Guns of August

The Guns of August (1962) (published in the UK as August 1914) is a volume of history by Barbara W. Tuchman. It is centered on the first month of World War I. After introductory chapters, Tuchman describes in great detail the opening events of the conflict. Its focus then becomes a military history of the contestants, chiefly the great powers. The Guns of August thus provides a narrative of the earliest stages of World War I, from the decisions to go to war, up until the start of the Franco-British offensive that stopped the German advance into France. The result was four years of trench warfare. In the course of her narrative Tuchman includes discussion of the plans, strategies, world events, and international sentiments before and during the war. The book was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction for publication year 1963, and proved very popular. Tuchman later returned to the subject of the social attitudes and issues that existed before World War I, which she had touched upon in The Guns of August, in a collection of eight essays published in 1966 under the title The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890–1914.

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