The Guns of August, Barbara W. Tuchman
The Guns of August, Barbara W. Tuchman
17 Rating(s)
List: $31.95 | Sale: $22.36
Club: $15.97

The Guns of August

Author: Barbara W. Tuchman

Narrator: Wanda McCaddon

Unabridged: 19 hr 10 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/01/2008

Synopsis

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 the nineteenth to the twentieth 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.A classic historical survey of a time and a people we all need to know more about, The Guns of August will not be forgotten.

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 BA degree 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. Her other books, include 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 her to deliver the Jefferson Lecture, the US government’s highest honor for intellectual achievement in the humanities.

About Wanda McCaddon

Wanda McCaddon (d. 2023) narrated well over six hundred titles for major audiobook publishers, sometimes with the pseudonym Nadia May or Donada Peters. She earned the prestigious Audio Award for best narration and numerous Earphones Awards. She was named a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Paul on August 15, 2010

Well, how d'you do, Private Willie McBride, First Class - do you mind if I sit down down here by your graveside? It's so nice to rest for awhile in the warm summer sun... I've been walking all day and I'm nearly done in. Well. So, Willie - I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen when you joi......more

Goodreads review by Paul on August 04, 2024

The guns of the Great War first roared to life on August 4, 1914, when Germany invaded Belgium; and in a way, those guns of mechanized modern war have never really fallen silent in more than a century since that day. Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August sets forth in a powerful and resonant manner t......more

Goodreads review by Gadi on July 01, 2012

I let go at around page 280 (out of 440 in my edition), when I started realizing that every paragraph is so chunked up with minute details about this general moving these troops out of this place and into this wing on this day because of these emotions and this miscommunication and this people's ove......more

Quotes

“Tuchman’s masterpiece of historical reconstruction has been given a narrator who comprehends in full its enormous narrative power…While Tuchman’s large cast of armies and their generals is challenging, [McCaddon] lessens this difficulty with her mimicry of national accents, as well as her pacing and variations in tone. [An] unforgettable listening experience…Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.” AudioFile

“Brilliant…Her narrative grips the mind.” New Yorker

“Fascinating…One of the finest works of history written…A splendid and glittering performance.” New York Times

“An epic never flagging in suspense.” Christian Science Monitor

“I have been unable to put this book down…Barbara W. Tuchman writes brilliantly and inspiringly...The Guns of August is lucid, fair, critical, and witty.” New York Times Book Review

“In provoking musing thoughts, Tuchman has no contemporary equal. Her book, thus, has a vitality that transcends its narrative virtues, which are considerable, and its feel for characterizations, which is excellent.” Wall Street Journal

“More dramatic than fiction...Magnificent…Beautifully organized, elegantly phrased, skillfully paced...The product of painstaking and sophisticated research.” Chicago Tribune

“Narrator [Wanda McCaddon] sounds exactly as listeners would expect historian Barbara Tuchman to sound:  educated, knowledgeable and fascinated with her subject —like the best kind of history professor—and her British accent lends more authority.” SoundCommentary.com

Awards

  • Pulitzer Prize
  • AudioFile Earphones Award
  • AudioFile Best Voice
Add to Cart
Add to Wish List