I checked out The Guns of August expecting a history of World War I, but the book actually views the ocnflict throug ha much narrower lens. First, it provides a brief outline of the geopolitical history of Europe leading up to the war. Next, it gives a detailed accounting of the political maneuvering of the variosu combatants, as a cavalcade of treaties and alliances nudged them—sometimes willingly, sometimes not—into armed conflict. Lastly, it provided a detailed military history of the war’s first thirty days or so—the titual Guns of August, so obvious in retrospect—leading up to the Battle of the Marne, where the Allies denied Germany a desicive victory over France, and the war descended into the four stagnant years of trench warfare for which it is most notorious.
In its focus on negotiations, planning, and other minutae of governanc,e it reminded of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, a book far large and scope but with a similar emphasis on the tiny, almost clerical decisions on which nations turn and tumble. This wash of detail can get a little overwhelming at times, but is carried along smoothly enough by Tuchman’s deft prose. Likewise, the battles are described using the common convention of military history, in which the movement of each formation is discussed. There is an audience for this sort of thing, and while I’m not exactly part of it, I’m interested enough in the subject matter to play along and enjoy it for what it is (though I’ll never truly be able to read those maps of battle maneuvers with anything like fluency).
The book was good overall, though its strongest passage was probably its first, where Tuchman uses the event of King Edward’s funeral as a fitting prelude to the carnage that would follow a few short years in his wake. She makes no claim to greater causality, but rather seizes on the event as a rich symbol for what was lost in those final years of European peace, and a meditation on how long and bloody the road to regaining it would ultimately be.