Practicing History_ Selected Essays - Barbara W. Tuchman [0]
BIBLE AND SWORD (1956)
THE ZIMMERMANN TELEGRAM (1958)
THE GUNS OF AUGUST (1962)
THE PROUD TOWER (1966)
STILWELL AND THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE IN CHINA (1971)
NOTES FROM CHINA (1972)
A DISTANT MIRROR (1978)
PRACTICING HISTORY (1981)
THE MARCH OF FOLLY (1984)
THE FIRST SALUTE (1988)
A Ballantine Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 1935, 1937, 1959, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1976, 1977, 1979, 1980, 1981 by Alma Tuchman, Lucy T. Eisenberg, and Jessica Tuchman Matthews.
Introduction copyright © 1981 by Barbara Tuchman.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, Canada.
Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
www.ballantinebooks.com
All but two of the essays in this book have been previously published.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Tuchman, Barbara Wertheim. Practicing history.
1. Historiography—Addresses, essays,
lectures. 2. History, Modern—20th century—
Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Title.
D13.T83 1982 907′.2 82–8757
eISBN: 978-0-307-79855-8
This edition published by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
v3.1
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Preface
I THE CRAFT
In Search of History
When Does History Happen?
History by the Ounce
The Historian as Artist
The Historian’s Opportunity
Problems in Writing the Biography of General Stilwell
The Houses of Research
Biography as a Prism of History
II THE YIELD
Japan: A Clinical Note
Campaign Train
What Madrid Reads
“Perdicaris Alive or Raisuli Dead”
The Final Solution
Israel: Land of Unlimited Impossibilities
Woodrow Wilson on Freud’s Couch
How We Entered World War I
Israel’s Swift Sword
If Mao Had Come to Washington
The Assimilationist Dilemma: Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story
Kissinger: Self-Portrait
Mankind’s Better Moments
III LEARNING FROM HISTORY
Is History a Guide to the Future?
Vietnam
WHEN, WHY, AND HOW TO GET OUT
COALITION IN VIETNAM—NOT WORTH ONE MORE LIFE
THE CITIZEN VERSUS THE MILITARY
Historical Clues to Present Discontents
Generalship
Why Policy-Makers Do Not Listen
Watergate and the Presidency
SHOULD WE ABOLISH THE PRESIDENCY?
A FEAR OF THE REMEDY
A LETTER TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
DEFUSING THE PRESIDENCY
On Our Birthday—America as Idea
About the Author
Preface
It is surprising to find, on reviewing one’s past work, which are the pieces that seem to stand up and which are those that have wilted. The only rule I can discover as a determinant—and it is a rule riddled with exceptions—is that, on the whole, articles or reports which have a “hard,” that is to say factual, subject matter or a personally observed story to tell are more readable today than “think” pieces intended as satire or advocacy, or written from the political passions of the moment. These tend to sound embarrassing after the passage of time, and have not, with one or two exceptions been revived.
Exceptions pursued every principle of inclusion or exclusion I tried to formulate. Two eyewitness accounts of historic episodes which I would have thought would read well in this collection failed, on rereading, to have the quality worthy of revival. One was an account of President Kennedy’s funeral, written for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and the other an account of the reuniting of Jerusalem in June 1967 after the Six-Day War, written for the Washington Post. In the first case, presumably because of the opening paragraphs on the funeral of Edward VII in The Guns of August, I was asked to cover the Kennedy ceremony, and accepted more out of curiosity than commitment. Equipped with press card, I observed the lying-in-state in the Capitol rotunda, circulated among the crowds in Lafayette Square next morning, watched the rather haphazard procession of the visiting