Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This is not one of Barbara Tuchman's best known books and yet it may be her most daring work. Tuchman's thesis is how could something as horrible as World War I happen if everything in the preceding years were so good? The answer is that "la belle epoque" is a myth and the quarter century prior to WWI was a very unsettling time. Tuchman does this by snapshots of various countries just before the war, so the book is more like short stories than a consistent narrative like The Guns of August. Depending on your interests, some chapters will be more fascinating than others. Her take on the British class structure did not thrill me that much, but she was very strong on the Anarchist movement, which has eerie overtones given current events, and the American Labor Movement. The centerpiece is a tour de force of early modern French history, specifically the Dreyfus Affair. Hardly touched in schools anymore, the Dreyfus Affair nearly tore France apart and Tuchman gives riveting account of what went on and how high the stakes were. This chapter alone is worth buying the book. In fact when I was in high school and college, World War I and the preceding years were lightly covered. Maybe people find World War II more interesting, or easier to understand. But the first World War was just as important (perhaps more so) and the causes of that conflict are complicated and raise very important issues. The Proud Tower is a good start to understanding this often overlooked historical period.