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The cover of The Guns of August

The Guns of August

Barbara W. Tuchman, 1962

The first month of the First World War, from the prewar plans to the Marne, told through the statesmen and generals whose decisions set the course of the whole war.

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23 parts, about 43 minutes to read.

Why read it

  • Reconstructs the first month of the First World War, showing how rigid plans and misjudgment led to years of trench war
  • Helps you see how the belief in a short war, fixed timetables and wishful intelligence can undo careful planning
  • Moves between capitals, headquarters and battlefields, with sharp portraits of the commanders and statesmen who decided events

Who it is for

  • Military history readers who want the war's opening in detail
  • Leaders who rely on plans drawn up long before a crisis
  • Readers asking how great powers blunder into war

What the summary covers

  1. A Funeral2 min
  2. Plans: The Schlieffen Plan2 min
  3. The Shadow of Sedan2 min
  4. “A Single British Soldier”1 min
  5. The Russian Steam Roller2 min
  6. Outbreak: August 1 in Berlin2 min
  7. August 1: Paris and London2 min
  8. Ultimatum in Brussels1 min
  9. Home Before the Leaves Fall2 min
  10. Goeben: An Enemy Then Flying2 min
  11. Liège and Alsace3 min
  12. BEF to the Continent1 min
  13. Sambre et Meuse2 min
  14. Debacle: Lorraine, Ardennes, Charleroi, Mons3 min
  15. The Cossacks Are Coming!2 min
  16. Tannenberg2 min
  17. The Flames of Louvain2 min
  18. Blue Water, Blockade, and the Great Neutral2 min
  19. Retreat2 min
  20. The Front Is Paris1 min
  21. Von Kluck's Turn2 min
  22. We Will Fight on the Marne2 min
  23. Afterword1 min

Recommended by

  • John F. Kennedy35th president of the United States
  • Clifton FadimanAmerican author, editor and radio personality

About the author

  • Barbara W. TuchmanAmerican historian, journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner who died in 1989
    • Born Barbara Wertheim in New York City on 30 January 1912, the second of three daughters of Maurice and Alma Wertheim.
    • Studied history and literature at Radcliffe College and took her bachelor's degree in 1933.
    • As a correspondent for The Nation she reported on the Spanish Civil War from Valencia and Madrid.
    • Her first book, The Lost British Policy: Britain and Spain Since 1700, came out in 1938.
    • Worked at the Office of War Information during World War II.
    • Became the first woman president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1979.
    • Gave the National Endowment for the Humanities Jefferson Lecture in 1980, titled Mankind's Better Moments.
    • Died on 6 February 1989 in Greenwich, Connecticut, aged seventy seven.

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