The Guns of August
Barbara Tuchman
539 pages, including index
published in 1962

I read this book in translation, because that was all the library had. The Guns of August is the history of August 1914, the first month of the Great War: World War I.It was recommended to me at the time, because of the parallels between then and the lead up to the war with Iraq. I finished it when the war with Iraq had already begun...

Reading The Guns of August, the parallels between the two wars indeed became clear. There was the same sort of inevitability about the Great War that there was about the war with Iraq. In principle both wars could've been stopped, if not for the facts that the principals involved just didn't seem to want to and their militaries argued that it was too late now to stop. Not very cheering to read, as you can imagine, though very gripping at the same time.

The rest of the book, which tells of the first month of war is even less cheerful, as it shows in lengthy detail how both the Central powers and the Allies squandered the chance for a speedy victory. At times it even became painful to read.

In the Netherlands the First World War is often overlooked; we were neutral for the duration of the war and not impacted by it very much. At school it was treated perfunctionary: "Ferdinand blah blah blah Serbia blah tenches blah Russian Revolution blah", quickly dismissed so we could get to the interesting stuff: the Second World War. As for myself, I confess I've never been that much interested in the Great War either, so much of the book was new to me. As a history book I like it very much: it's well told and about an important subject, but not an easy book emotionally, certainly not in these times.