Bible and Sword, Barbara W. Tuchman
Bible and Sword, Barbara W. Tuchman
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Bible and Sword
England and Palestine from the Bronze Age to Balfour

Author: Barbara W. Tuchman

Narrator: Wanda McCaddon

Unabridged: 12 hr 33 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/05/2009

Categories: Nonfiction, History

Synopsis

Twotime PulitzerPrize winning historian Barbara Tuchman explores the complex relationship of Britain to Palestine that led to the founding of the modern Jewish stateand to many of the problems that plague the Middle East today.From early times the British people have been drawn to the Holy Land through two major influences: the translation of the Bible into English and, later, the imperial need to control the road to India and access to the oil in the Middle East. Under these influences, one cultural and the other political, countless Englishmenpilgrims, crusaders, missionaries, merchants, explorers, and surveyorshave made their way to the land of the ancient Hebrews.With the lucidity and vividness that characterizes her work, Barbara Tuchman brings to life the development of these twin motivesthe Bible and the swordin the consciousness of the British people, until they were finally brought together at the end of World War I when Britains conquest of Palestine from the Turks and the solemn moment of entering Jerusalem were imminent. Requiring a gesture of matching significance, that event evoked the Balfour Declaration of 1917, establishing a Britishsponsored national home for the modern survivors of the people of the Old Testament.In her account, first published in 1956, Ms. Tuchman demonstrates that the seeds of todays troubles in the Middle East were planted long before the first efforts at founding a modern state of Israel.

About Barbara W. Tuchman

Barbara W. Tuchman (1912-1989) was a self-trained historian and author who achieved prominence with The Zimmerman Telegram and international fame with The Guns of August, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1963. She received her B.A. from Radcliffe College in 1933 and worked as a research assistant at the Institute of Pacific Relations in New York and Tokyo from 1934 to 1935. She then began working as a journalist and contributed to publications including the Nation, for which she covered the Spanish Civil War as a foreign correspondent in 1937. Before her death in 1989, she authored several other books, including The Proud Tower, A Distant Mirror, Practicing History, The March of Folly, The First Salute, and Stilwell and the American Experience in China: 1911-45, also awarded the Pulitzer Prize. In 1980 the National Endowment for the Humanities selected Tuchman to deliver the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for intellectual achievement in the humanities.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Evan on May 13, 2013

After finishing The Guns of August, which I thought was a real masterpiece, I was overcome with enthusiasm for Barbara Tuchman (Tuch-mania?) and decided to promptly go through her back catalog. Bible and Sword, her first published work, has an unusual (and ambitious focus). The book examines the rel......more

Goodreads review by Sean on May 24, 2020

Disappointing and troubling. Rarely has a text informed me so profoundly about an author’s willingness to bury any pretense at objectivity. Tuchman’s misrepresentation and diminution of Arabs does achieve a sort of backward pedagogical purpose by illuminating the endemic hubris of the West toward Ar......more

Goodreads review by Damon on December 24, 2012

Meh. I found it difficult to concentrate on this book, and it was a chore to finish. Some of it was interesting. Some passages hinted at an anti-Arab bias. I'm glad I finished. I hope to move on to more interesting books on the subject.......more

Goodreads review by Marc A. on July 29, 2014

This is Barbara Tuchman's first significant published work, released in 1956. For once my unfortunate combination of slow reading speed and propensity to be distracted from my reading by the pursuit of other avocations (e.g. I'm currently trying to use a computer program to teach myself to play the......more

Goodreads review by Erik on December 09, 2015

Having read and enjoyed a number of books by Tuchman I picked this up from a sale shelf at The Amarynth Bookstore in Evanston. Being her first book, it isn't as polished as her later bestsellers. Basically, the book covers relations between Britain and Palestine from an English perspective. Although......more

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