The Guns of August is a book about the days leading up to and the first month of World War 1. In telling this story, Tuchman brings to life the key political and military characters of the time just as an author of fiction would. She explains the series of disagreements, betrayals, and miscommunications that led to the outbreak of the war, breaks down the factors that caused those in positions of power to make such incompetent and deluded decisions, and includes heart-wrenching primary accounts of the brutal consequences of these decisions.
Her elegant writing captivated me from the very first sentence: “So gorgeous was the spectacle on the May morning of 1910 when nine kings rode in the funeral of Edward VII of England that the crowd, waiting in hushed and black-clad awe, could not keep back gasps of admiration.” In addition to being entertaining and informative, this book greatly influenced my writing style.
The Guns of August serves as a nice contrast to movies like 1917 and All Quiet on the Western Front. It helped me see World War 1 as more than just ruthless generals sending wave upon wave of soldiers to be slaughtered. However, despite being a much more comprehensive piece of literature, Tuchman has received her fair share of criticism (mainly from scholars) for historical inaccuracies. But in my opinion, the value of studying history does not come from knowing exactly what happened on which day. Yes, history should be about the story of us. But we should not forget that it should be a story. A story of courage and cowardace, of love and sorrow, of the choices we made and what we can learn from them. President Kennedy credited this book with helping him to see through the false dilemma that his generals presented to him during the Cuban Missile Crisis and instead broker a peace deal with Secretary Khrushchev of the Soviet Union. So when an author like Tuchman is able to tell stories that intrigue the layman, to me, is this better history than the academic writings produced by a scholar.
Men could not sustain a war of such magnitude and pain without hope - the hope that its very enormity would ensure that it could never happen again and the hope that when somehow it had been fought through to a resolution, the foundations of a better-ordered world would have been laid… When every autumn people said it could not last through the winter, and when every spring there was still no end in sight, only the hope that out of it all some good would accrue to mankind kept men and nations fighting.