The Proud Tower: The World Before the War 1890-1914

The Proud Tower: The World Before the War 1890-1914 - Barbara W. Tuchman [epub]

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 The Proud Tower, 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 Jaurès on the night the Great War began and an epoch came to a close.

“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

Paperback: 608 pages
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks; 1st Ballantine Books edition (August 27, 1996)