This book, published in the early 1960s to the acclaim of a Pulitzer Prize, is an erudite elucidation of the background situation and actions of the beginning month of the First World War. An amazing detailed historical account, that still manages to both readable and insightful.

Tuchman does not (as would be popular today with our democratic directorial lens) concentrate on foot soldiers reactions, personal side stories, nor war's brutal caustic acid which dissolves individual moral behavior. What she does do is focus on the logistics and main actions of the military campaigns. War is first about battles between nations. These battles are conceived, planned, and executed by the nation's leaders, both political and military, and she keeps her graze firmly on these foes. She provides insightful comments on these leaders as they are swept up by events beyond their control.

All this is executed with a beautify prose style which shows her love of the English language, but even more importantly, gives her a powerful tool to convey a sense of the personalities involved. For instance, you can almost see the people's faces and predict their actions from her brief but eloquent descriptions, such as:

"..the indifference of a mind so shallow as to be all surface.."

describing the Russian Czar, and then, describing English General Sir John French:

"His normally apoplectic expression, combined with the tight cavalryman's stock which he affected in place of collar and tie, gave him an appearance of being perpetually on the verge of choking, as indeed he often was, emotionally if not physically."

and

"..with that marvelous incapacity to admit error that was to make him ultimately a Field Marshal."

describing British Field Marshal Henry Wilson.

Like any great chronicler of the past, she is not hesitant to express her opinion:

“Some damned foolish thing in the Balkans,” Bismarck had predicted, would ignite the next war. The assassination of the Austrian heir apparent, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, by Serbian nationalists on June 28, 1914, satisfied his condition. Austria-Hungary, with the bellicose frivolity of senile empires, determined to use the occasion to absorb Serbia as she had absorbed Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1909.

"With their relentless talent for the tactless, the Germans chose to violate Luxembourg at a place whose native and official name was Trois Vierges. The three virgins in fact represented faith, hope, and charity, but History with her apposite touch arranged for the occasion that they should stand in the public mind for Luxembourg, Belgium, and France."


Finally, of note is her description of the "fog of war" on the Eastern Front:

"Two armies, now totally committed, surged and gripped and broke apart and clashed again in confused and separate combats over a front of forty miles. A regiment advanced, its neighbor was thrown back, gaps appeared, the enemy thrust through or, unaccountably, did not. Artillery roared, cavalry squadrons, infantry units, heavy horse-drawn field-gun batteries moved and floundered through villages and forests, between lakes, across fields and roads. Shells smashed into farmhouses and village streets. A battalion advancing under cover of shellfire disappeared behind a curtain of smoke and mist to some unknown fate.Columns of prisoners herded to the rear blocked the advancing troops. Brigades took ground or yielded it, crossed each other's lines of communication, became tangled up with the wrong divisions. Field commanders lost track of their units, staff cars sped about, German scout plans flew overhead trying to gather information, army commanders struggled to find out what was happening, and issued orders which might not be received or carried out or conform to realities by the time they reached the front. Three hundred thousand men flailed at each other, marched and tiredly counter-marched, fired their guns, got drunk if they were lucky enough to occupy a village or sat on the ground in the forest with a few companions while night came; and the next day the struggle went on and the great battle of the Eastern Front was fought out."