The Sad Tower

The Proud Tower by Barbara Tuchman
New York, Macmillan [1966]
xv, 528 p. illus., ports. 25 cm.

Barbara Tuchman intrigues me.  A woman who made her mark with several classic histories back in the 1960s when it must have been a daunting task to be a woman trying to get scholarly work published in the field of European history.  Not only did she get published, but is recognized for - not one - but several classic volumes of history such as A Distant Mirror, The Guns of August, and this book, The Proud Tower.  Every May as I've conducted the inventory of our collection, I've seen The Proud Tower, and thought, "I'm going to read that." In this 100th anniversary year of the start of WWI, I've finally gotten around to reading it.  It is a magnificent read, but probably one that would swamp most high school students.  I greatly enjoy history - and European history - but I have to admit that it was a long, dense - though enjoyable - read.

The Proud Tower is subtitled, A Portrait of the World Before the War: 1890-1914, and though, I'd call it a portrait of the Anglo-European-Slavic world, it is a monumental history.  Tuchman surveys the great political and cultural trends that defined the end of the 19th century and the run up to WWI: the declining power of the British aristocracy, the rise of naked US imperialism, Anarchism, Socialism, music, philosophy, and militarism.

I'm glad I read it, especially since I hope to read at least one of the new WWI books that have come out recently.  I can't say that I'd recommend it to just any high school student interested in history.  But if a student is a European history aficionado, or just looking for a rich book on Europe before the "Great War" then I'll definitely think of Tuchman's masterpiece.