Description: "During the fateful quarter century leading up to World War I--the climax of a century of rapid unprecedented change--a privileged few enjoyed Olympian luxury as the underclass was 'heaving in its pain, its power, and its hate.' In [this book], Barbara W. Tuchman brings the era to vivid life: the decline of the Edwardian aristocracy; the anarchists of Europe and America; Germany and its self-depicted hero, Richard Strauss; Diaghilev's Russian ballet and Stravinsky's music; the Dreyfus Affair; the Peace Conferences in The Hague; and the enthusiasm and tragedy of socialism, epitomized by the assassination of Jean Jauráes on the night the Great War began and an epoch came to a close"--
Review Quotes: "[Barbara W. Tuchman's] Pulitzer Prize-winning The Guns of August was an expert evocation of the first spasm of the 1914-1918 war. She brings the same narrative gifts and panoramic camera eye to her portrait of the antebellum world."--Newsweek
"A rare combination of impeccable scholarship and literary polish . . . It would be impossible to read The Proud Tower without pleasure and admiration."--The New York Times "An exquisitely written and thoroughly engrossing work . . . The author's knowledge and skill are so impressive that they whet the appetite for more."--Chicago Tribune "[Tuchman] tells her story with cool wit and warm understanding."--Time