The Guns of August: The Pulitzer Prize-Winning Classic About the Outbreak of World War I Mass Market Paperback – August 3, 2004

Wow, what a debacle of human folly. The book was a recommendation from a magazine...maybe The Economist. I hadn't been interested in the topic, but the review made it sound like a work of art irrespective (or in spite of) the topic, and I wanted to evolve the very fuzzy painting I had of Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Turns out this is a book I had a hard time pulling myself away from just to execute the basics of life - meals, sleep, work, kids. I have a very poor memory for names and can't think of a book I've read with more names and titles, so I wasn't able to track more than perhaps one tenth of the characters, but I don't think it made much difference to my overall comprehension of the events and dynamics.Turns out WWI was just a giant wallow in senseless pride and destruction and slaughter. I didn't jump in thinking it was glorious or extremely strategic, but I would never have guessed how much it reflected the petulance, irritability, self-glorification, enmity, spite, pride, aggressiveness, and hunger for power of a microscopically small number of national leaders and royalty. At least by Tuchman's telling, there wasn't really a well-crafted plan among all the participants, belligerents or collateral damage countries. The King of Belgium is clearly the most admirable character and the one with the most military savvy - now there's a dark horse bet - albeit the simplest military strategy to execute. The entire escapade is rife with ineptitude, endless bickering among generals, confirmation bias, throwing good money after bad, and examples of failure of cohesion and leadership. Pity the poor souls thrown into this pit of doom.I can't recommend this book more highly as a source of leadership training. One has a real-world example of the most complex organizations, a huge threat landscape, leadership impact, and esprit de corps challenges. One sees the outcome of all these dynamics and the underpinnings of successes and failures. The gravity of a lack of teamwork, suppression of inconvenient information, failures of imagination, communication breakdowns, and human emotions are all obvious and easy to learn from. I would expect this is required reading within every military academy the world over, and probably within many top leadership schools. I've read many business leadership books - I can still recall cracking 'In Search of Excellence' back in the 80s or 90s - and this one has them all beat by light years.

I've read military history most of my life, and this book is definitely a classic. The depth of her research, across several languages, across the seas and across the Western and Eastern fronts, is impressive. To refine all of that research and multiple perspectives into diamond-bright prose makes this book even more remarkable. Military history buffs will definitely want this on their shelves. How have I not read this before?Her chapter on the chase of the Goeben is one of the best naval combat descriptions I have come across. Her section on Tannenberg is also excellent. And through it all, she shows the events that led to the failure of both Plan 17 and the Schlieffen Plan in minute but thorough detail. As I read, and as it ended, I had that rare feeling when I read a book of this quality--give me more! If only she had covered each year of the war with such grasp of character, passion for research, and exquisite storytelling.As usual in such military history works, the political background may be cursory--too cursory for some, given some comments I've seen. Yes, you may have to go elsewhere for such political histories, but then, should we be surprised? The title, after all, is "The GUNS of August," and Tuchman delivers. The focus is not on diplomacy (not that it ever had a chance to develop in 1914, given the treaties that doomed Europe), but on the hopes that the war once started could be won speedily. The mindset of each military, and of each countries' leadership, is well told, and provides ample background for how these battles unfolded.I have a few quibbles, which have more to do with the state of book editing today than Tuchman. First were the typographical errors I found while reading this edition. I can't compare this to other editions in this regard, but a literary achievement such as this deserves to be polished occasionally. Second, while there are maps--good maps that illustrate the action--they did not translate well into paperback, and therefore readers may want a historical atlas to accompany this fine, fine narrative. Lastly, Tuchman seems to like to show off her French, and while her use of sentences from sources add welcome color and character, she was inconsistent in translating them--a strange flaw, given the lengths to which she devoted to writing such a literary monument in her native tongue. Despite these minor faults, it's still a 5-star book.

Tuchman's recounting of events in the opening days of WWI is engaging, informative, and a master class in how hubris should be one of the seven (or eight) deadly sins. Generals and politicians on all side who were convinced of their own righteousness pushing for a war they said would be won in just a few weeks. (Iraq and Afghanistan come to mind at this point.) WWI lasted four years, cost ten million lives, and set the stage for WWII.The Kindle version is a text-to-digital conversion. Not surprising since original was published in 1962. But it's a terrible, lazy conversion. Misinterpreted characters appear frequently throughout, sometimes making the text indecipherable. There is no table of contents, no notes, no maps, no photographs. "Guns of August" is an important work of history. It deserved the extra attention a modestly skilled editor could have brought to the e-book. But the publisher, suffering from their own hubris, felt that extra effort was unnecessary.