Word: tuchman
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Some "serious" historians have criticized Tuchman for selling out, saying she narrates history without drawing any conclusions. The March of Folly, however, should satisfy both camps. Tuchman packs her writing with tidbits--scandalous, racy, funny, and troubling--about leaders from Pope Alexander VI (1592-1503) to Lyndon B. Johnson, while at the same time drawing parallels between the ages and generalities from the events...
...prototype of tales of political folly, Tuchman says, is the story of the Seige of Troy. Why would the Trojans suspect nothing when their enemies for 10 years, the Greeks, withdrew suddenly in the middle of the night and left a huge wooden horse behind them? The Trojans neglected even to examine the horse before tearing down the gates of their city to bring it inside...
Could their mistake be excused on the grounds that the gods were against the Trojans, and backed the Greek warriors hidden inside the hollow wooden statue? The second folly Tuchman examines, however, will allow no excuses based on the ill will of Zeus, Hera, or Athena--it involves the six popes of the Catholic Church who held office from 1470-1530, and whose mismanagement led directly to the Protestant secession...
...next incidence of folly was also caused by deafness to grassroots sentiment. Perhaps the Renaissance popes can be excused, Tuchman argues, surrounded as they were by the trappings of their office. But British parliamentarians, who pioneered the system of representative government, should have listened to the "common man" when he called from America for representation. Americans protesting the Stamp Act had no ideas of breaking away from English rule; they just found it unfair to be taxed without a voice...
...graduates wore clothing made of American cloth--should have given the House of Commons ample warning of the unrest. Yet prejudice against the colonists and their abilities, and the false sense of superiority in the British government, created the blunders that caused the American revolution, Tuchman argues...