Word: tuchman
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...January 1962, when Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August was released. The New Yorker noted that it was one of the few books ever heralded by three consecutive full-page ads in the same issue of the Sunday Times Books Review. The book itself was no anticlimax; quickly greeted with critical acclaim, it eventually won the Pulitzer Prize. But Tuchman's dramatic account of the opening weeks of the First World War achieved an even more astonishing feat for a history book-in eight months it sold over 270,000 copies, and by October, The New Yorker could report...
...Tuchman has always been an anomaly in the field of historical scholarship. Although she never earned a Ph.D and did not write her first book until she was nearly 45, the historian has received two Pulitzer prizes as well as plaudits from scholars around the world. Unlike most historians who generally publish variations on a theme, the subjects of her books have ranged from ancient Palestine to medieval Europe and 20th-century China. Finally, her books have been uniformly successful--and several have been massive best sellers...
...frequently proffered explanation for the Tuchman magic is her unique style. In a time when history as a discipline is becoming increasingly quantified and scientific, Tuchman has led a single-handed crusade for a humanistic approach "Prefabricated systems make me suspicious and science applied to history makes me wince, "Tuchman told the Radcliffe chapter of Phi Beta Kappa in 1963. Quoting Leon Trotsky, she added "Cause in history refracts itself through a natural selection of accidents...
Rebelling against the "systematizes," Tuchman has instead spread a vision of the historian as artist, and advocated history for its own sake. "Is it necessary to insist on a purpose" Tuchman wrote...
...months, he mentioned the book The Guns of August and its accounts of arrogance and miscalculation that led to World War I. In all the subsequent analysis of the Cuban crisis, scholars and participants have dwelt on nuclear balances, geography and diplomatic tactics. It just could be that Barbara Tuchman, author of The Guns of August, was as important as the U.S. Navy. It could be, too, that Lord David Cecil, who wrote Kennedy's favorite book, Melbourne, the biography of the youthful Queen Victoria's Prime Minister, and Winston Churchill, in his role as chronicler...