Proud Tower - Barbara W. Tuchman [0]
“Mrs. Tuchman’s popularity is due to more than her skill with words … she never loses sight of individuals, and she is not afraid to tell a story.… As in all her books, this one is resplendent with people … marvels of idiosyncratic fullness.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Her Pulitzer Prize-winning The Guns of August was an expert evocation of the first spasm of the 1914–18 war. She brings the same narrative gifts and panoramic camera eye to her portrait of the antebellum world.”
—Newsweek
“An exquisitely written and thoroughly engrossing work.… The author’s knowledge and skill are so impressive that they whet the appetite for more.… [To read these polished essays] is an esthetically rewarding experience. No one should forgo the opportunity.”
—Chicago Tribune
“Solid and interesting.… Bright with sketches of hundreds of men.”
—The Philadelphia Inquirer
“Mrs. Tuchman paints the scene for us with a masterly brush, a scene glittering and brilliant, sumptuous and outrageous.”
—Herald Tribune
“A stunning success … As remarkable a work as The Guns of August.”
—Library Journal
By Barbara W. Tuchman
BIBLE AND SWORD
THE ZIMMERMANN TELEGRAM
THE GUNS OF AUGUST
THE PROUD TOWER
STILWELL AND THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE IN CHINA
A DISTANT MIRROR
PRACTICING HISTORY
THE MARCH OF FOLLY
THE FIRST SALUTE
A Ballantine Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 1962, 1963, 1965 by Barbara W. Tuchman
Copyright © 1966 by The Macmillam Company
Copyright renewed 1994 by Dr. Lester 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 distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published by The Macmillan Company in 1966.
Chapter 2 appeared, in part, in The Atlantic Monthly for May 1963. Parts of Chapter 3 were published in American Heritage for December 1962 and in The Nation 100th Anniversary issue, September 1965. Parts of Chapter 1 were published in Vogue in 1965.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:
Doubleday and A.P. Watt Ltd.: “The White Man’s Burden” and eight lines from “The Truce of the Bear” (“The Bear that Walks Like a Man”) from Rudyard Kipling’s Verse: Definitive Edition. Reprinted by permission of Doubleday and A.P. Watt Ltd. on behalf of The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty.
Henry Holt and Company, Inc. and The Society of Authors: Excerpt from “On the Idle Hill of Summer” from “A Shropshire Lad” from The Collected Poems of A.E. Housman. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Co., Inc., and The Society of Authors as the literary representative of the Estate of A.E. Housman.
A.P Watt Ltd.: Four lines from “The Valley of the Black Pig” from The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats. Reprinted by permission of A.P. Watt Ltd. on behalf of Michael Yeats.
Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
www.ballantinebooks.com
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 96–96511
eISBN: 978-0-307-79811-4
v3.1
While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down.
From “The City in the Sea”
EDGAR ALLAN POE
Acknowledgments
To Mr. Cecil Scott of The Macmillan Company, a participant in this book from the first outline to the end, I owe a writer’s most important debt: for the steady companionship of an interested reader and for constructive criticism throughout mixed with encouragement in times of need.
For advice, suggestions and answers to queries I am grateful to Mr. Roger Butterfield, author of The American Past; Professor Fritz Epstein of Indiana University; Mr. Louis Fischer, author of The Life of Lenin; Professor Edward Fox of Cornell University; Mr. K. A. Golding of the International Transport Workers’ Federation, London; Mr. Jay Harrison of Columbia Records; Mr. John Gutman of the Metropolitan Opera; Mr. George Lichtheim