Barbara W. Tuchman
There is a certain fascination in reading about something that you know will end tragically. Whether it’s the sinking of the Titanic or the assassination of JFK, the fact that you, the reader, know the outcome but the people you’re reading about don’t lends a tragic air to the account. This is especially true of the events of the summer of 1914. You know that the biggest war in history is about to erupt, that empires will fall, and you watch helplessly, gripped by the human drama.
Barbara Tuchman captured this tragedy perfectly in her 1962 work “The Guns of August”. It’s a measure of her skill that, even though you know how things turn out, you keep hoping that, somehow, disaster will be averted.
One could argue that Tuchman doesn’t pay much attention to the soldiers on the ground, but this book is more about grand strategy and command from at the corps and army level. It’s full of missed opportunities and contingencies and, despite it’s length, is hard to put down.