The Proud Tower

A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914

By: Barbara W. Tuchman

Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon

Length: 22 hrs and 12 mins

Publisher's summary

"The diplomatic origins, so-called, of the War are only the fever chart of the patient; they do not tell us what caused the fever. To probe for underlying causes and deeper forces one must operate within the framework of a whole society and try to discover what moved the people in it." (Barbara W. Tuchman)

The fateful quarter-century leading up to World War I was a time when the world of privilege still existed in Olympian luxury and the world of protest was heaving in its pain, its power, and its hate. The age was the climax of a century of the most accelerated rate of change in history, a cataclysmic shaping of destiny.

In The Proud Tower, Barbara Tuchman concentrates on society rather than the state. With an artist's selectivity, Tuchman brings to vivid life the people, places, and events that shaped the years leading up to the Great War: the Edwardian aristocracy and the end of their reign; the Anarchists of Europe and America, who voiced the protest of the oppressed; Germany, as portrayed through the figure of the self-depicted hero, Richard Strauss; the sudden gorgeous blaze of Diaghilev's Russian Ballet and Stravinsky's music; the Dreyfus Affair; the two Peace Conferences at the Hague; and, finally, the youth, ideals, enthusiasm, and tragedy of Socialism, epitomized in the moment when the heroic Jean Jaures was shot to death on the night the War began and an epoch ended.

©1996 Barbara W. Tuchman (P)2005 Blackstone Audiobooks

Critic reviews

"It would be impossible to read The Proud Tower without pleasure and admiration." (The New York Times)

"Tuchman proved in The Guns of August that she could write better military history than most men. In this sequel, she tells her story with cool wit and warm understanding." (Time)

Simply outstanding

Barbara Tuchman was the complete package: erudite, elegant. She viewed her work as an art, and she tells stories that make history sing.

A wonderful survey

Tuchman creates a vivid portrayal of seemingly disparate topics that sum up the very nature of life in the two and one half decades before WW l. All the major forces that contributed to the status of the world’s condition in August 1914 are there. Even without a link to the coming war the momentous shifts of the old world of the 19th century to the new 20th century are spell binding.

Tuchman’

Of the four books written by Barbara Tuchman, I found this the most interesting. If you’ve liked Guns of August or March of Folly, you’ll enjoy her presentation here too.

Masterful

As always with Barbara Tuchman a masterful, enlightening and instructive view on the selected period. In this case you get the feeling of living through the pre-war period. Some chapters are just an absolute please (e.g. first one on the English goverment & establishment, chapter on the Dreyfus affair in France). It is also commendable how taking ~8-9 different subjects and sticking to them the author manages to create a coherent tapestry of the period

The gone mad before it went truly mad!

How do you tell the story of how a world went mad in 1914? You start a quarter of a century before and begin the slow walk forward year by year with a list of the self serving, self absorbed Politicians, Socialists, Anarchists, Monarchists and a sprinkling of liberal democrats. Their world is spinning from their grasp and a new world is emerging due to ideas, technology, political systems and they can’t seem to understand how to do it peacefully. At the fringe of society are the Anarchists who are hell bent on destroying any system for the sake of destroying. Assassination seems to be the main focal point that the Anarchist see as a way to cause change. Socialist see strikes and unification across borders as the way for workers to cause change in the Capitalist system. Politicians seem almost inept as assassination spreads across the world... and the world is marching toward the cataclysmic event that will turn Europe and the world upside down for the next 100 years. It is the end of the Monarchists, the emergence of totalitarian rule and with a glimmer of hope that the liberal democracies will prevail. What has happened is that they have been swept up into August 1914 with no way out, you might say they never saw it coming but instead they lived it and should have seen all the warning signs. The book is good but not great unlike the Guns of August or March to Folly. It may be the subject matter or time period, it could have been a great time during this period of history but the good people did nothing and allowed evil to prevail.

An history of the past with relevance to today

Where does The Proud Tower rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

An excellent demonstration of how individual decisions and historical trends can combine to produce radical, and unpredictable, social and political changes. The book is relevant to the current debate between those who on the one side believe in historical necessity and those who believe in the power of human will to produce "hope and change."

Classic History

A penetrating study of the cross-currents of culture, thought and society in the decades leading up to the Great War. Is war programmed into the human species? Maybe.

Different View of History

The Author gives a great verity of information from the other side of history . The workers and politicians with back ground information and insights

Outstanding

This shows why the author is one of the preeminent authorities on WWI. She has a vast knowledge of all aspects of age; politics, culture music art literature, everything. The narrator was awesome also.

The narrator’s voice is so bad it blows my mind

I normally listen to audiobooks at 3x speed minimum. For other English narrators I sometimes go down to 2.5. I find this narrator unintelligible at almost any speed.