The Proud Tower
A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914
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Narrated by:
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Wanda McCaddon
About this listen
"The diplomatic origins, so-called, of the War are only the fever chart of the patient; they do not tell us what caused the fever. To probe for underlying causes and deeper forces one must operate within the framework of a whole society and try to discover what moved the people in it." (Barbara W. Tuchman)
The fateful quarter-century leading up to World War I was a time when the world of privilege still existed in Olympian luxury and the world of protest was heaving in its pain, its power, and its hate. The age was the climax of a century of the most accelerated rate of change in history, a cataclysmic shaping of destiny.
In The Proud Tower, Barbara Tuchman concentrates on society rather than the state. With an artist's selectivity, Tuchman brings to vivid life the people, places, and events that shaped the years leading up to the Great War: the Edwardian aristocracy and the end of their reign; the Anarchists of Europe and America, who voiced the protest of the oppressed; Germany, as portrayed through the figure of the self-depicted hero, Richard Strauss; the sudden gorgeous blaze of Diaghilev's Russian Ballet and Stravinsky's music; the Dreyfus Affair; the two Peace Conferences at the Hague; and, finally, the youth, ideals, enthusiasm, and tragedy of Socialism, epitomized in the moment when the heroic Jean Jaures was shot to death on the night the War began and an epoch ended.
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- The Secret History of the End of an Empire
- By: Alex von Tunzelmann
- Narrated by: Nicola Barber
- Length: 15 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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At the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the British Empire withdrew from India, igniting the exhilaration and turmoil of a newly free society. In this vivid, atmospheric popular history, Alex von Tunzelmann chronicles these times through the most prominent figures.
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Such an interesting piece of History made easy
- By Diego on 01-23-12
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The Empire Must Die
- Russia's Revolutionary Collapse, 1900 - 1917
- By: Mikhail Zygar
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 22 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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The window between two equally stifling autocracies - the imperial family and the communists - was open only briefly, in the last couple of years of the 19th century until the end of WWI, by which time the revolution was in full fury. From the last years of Tolstoy until the death of the Tsar and his family, however, Russia experimented with liberalism and cultural openness. Novelists and playwrights blossomed and political ideas were swapped in coffee houses.
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An excellent look at an interesting history.
- By brian on 06-22-18
By: Mikhail Zygar
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Young Radicals
- In the War for American Ideals
- By: Jeremy McCarter
- Narrated by: Jeremy McCarter
- Length: 11 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Where do we find our ideals? What does it mean to live for them - and to risk dying for them? For Americans during World War I, these weren't abstract questions. Young Radicals tells the story of five activists, intellectuals, and troublemakers who agitated for freedom and equality in the hopeful years before the war, then fought to defend those values in a country pitching into violence and chaos.
By: Jeremy McCarter
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John Quincy Adams
- Militant Spirit
- By: James Traub
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 25 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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John Quincy Adams was the last of his kind - a Puritan from the age of the Founders who despised party and compromise yet dedicated himself to politics and government. The son of John Adams, he was a brilliant ambassador and secretary of state, a frustrated president at a historic turning point in American politics, and a dedicated congressman who literally died in office - at the age of 80, in the House of Representatives, in the midst of an impassioned political debate.
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Best narrator of all the audio books I've listened
- By grimm79 on 12-12-17
By: James Traub
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For Liberty and Glory
- Washington, Lafayette, and Their Revolutions
- By: James R. Gaines
- Narrated by: Norman Dietz
- Length: 21 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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On April 18, 1775, a riot over the price of flour broke out in the French city of Dijon. That night, across the Atlantic, Paul Revere mounted the fastest horse he could find and kicked it into a gallop. So began what have been called the "sister revolutions" of France and America. In a single, thrilling narrative, this audiobook tells the story of those revolutions and shows just how deeply intertwined they actually were.
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Excellent presentation
- By Hal on 08-20-12
By: James R. Gaines
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1932
- The Rise of Hitler and FDR - Two Tales of Politics, Betrayal, and Unlikely Destiny
- By: David Pietrusza
- Narrated by: David Stifel
- Length: 19 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Two Depression-battered nations confronted destiny in 1932, going to the polls in their own way to anoint new leaders, to rescue their people from starvation and hopelessness. America would elect a Congress and a president - ebullient aristocrat Franklin Roosevelt or tarnished "Wonder Boy" Herbert Hoover. Decadent, divided Weimar Germany faced two rounds of bloody Reichstag elections and two presidential contests - doddering reactionary Paul von Hindenburg against rising radical hate-monger Adolf Hitler.
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What a waste of time
- By Pam Sullivan on 07-06-19
By: David Pietrusza
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Lenin
- The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror
- By: Victor Sebestyen
- Narrated by: Jonathan Aris
- Length: 20 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Drawing on new research, including the diaries, memoirs, and personal letters of both Lenin and his friends, Victor Sebestyen's unique biography - the first in English in nearly two decades - is not only a political examination of one of the most important historical figures of the 20th century but a portrait of Lenin the man. Unexpectedly, Lenin was someone who loved nature, hunting, and fishing and could identify hundreds of species of plants, a despotic ruler whose closest ties and friendships were with women.
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Lenin totally took an extra piece of that cake.
- By John Gathly on 05-14-19
By: Victor Sebestyen
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The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, Volume I: Visions of Glory 1874-1932
- By: William Manchester
- Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
- Length: 41 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Winston Churchill is perhaps the most important political figure of the 20th century. His great oratory and leadership during the Second World War were only part of his huge breadth of experience and achievement. Studying his life is a fascinating way to imbibe the history of his era and gain insight into key events that have shaped our time.
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Superb - Review of Both Volume I & Volume II
- By Wolfpacker on 01-23-09
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Young Titan
- The Making of Winston Churchill
- By: Michael Shelden
- Narrated by: John Curless
- Length: 14 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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In modern memory, Winston Churchill remains the man with the cigar and the equanimity among the ruins. Few can remember that at the age of 40 he was considered washed up, his best days behind him. In Young Titan, historian Michael Shelden has produced the first biography focused on Churchill’s early career, the years between 1901 and 1915 that both nearly undid him but also forged the character that would later triumph in the Second World War.
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sorry
- By Kemper 16 on 11-14-24
By: Michael Shelden
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In The March of Folly, two-time Pulitzer Prize winning historian Barbara Tuchman tackles the pervasive presence of folly in governments through the ages. Defining folly as the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests, despite the availability of feasible alternatives, Tuchman details four decisive turning points in history that illustrate the very heights of folly in government.
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In the dark winter of 1917, as World War I was deadlocked, Britain knew that Europe could be saved only if the United States joined the war. But President Wilson remained unshakable in his neutrality. Then, with a single stroke, the tool to propel America into the war came into a quiet British office. One of countless messages intercepted by the crack team of British decoders, the Zimmermann telegram was a top-secret message from Berlin inviting Mexico to join Japan in an invasion of the United States.
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US entry to World War I
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The First Salute
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A brilliant classic
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In this Pulitzer Prize - winning biography, Barbara Tuchman explores American relations with China through the experiences of one of our men on the ground. In the cantankerous but level-headed "Vinegar Joe", Tuchman found a subject who allowed her to perform, in the words of the National Review, "one of the historian's most envied magic acts: conjoining a fine biography of a man with a fascinating epic story."
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A period that directly affected our world today
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Tuchman surprises me...
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Wonderful
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The 14th century reflects two contradictory images: on the one hand, a glittering time of crusades and castles, cathedrals and chivalry, and the exquisitely decorated Books of Hours; and on the other, a time of ferocity and spiritual agony, a world of chaos and the plague.
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And you thought the twentieth century was rough...
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Two-time Pulitzer Prize - winning historian Barbara Tuchman explores the complex relationship of Britain to Palestine that led to the founding of the modern Jewish state - and to many of the problems that plague the Middle East today.
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The Bubonic Plague of the 14th century killed one third of all human beings in Europe and Western Asia; many who survived the plague killed each other in the Hundred Years War that followed. What was it like to live in this calamitous century, when knighthood (and much more) died a violent death? Find out.
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A classic history
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Master historian Barbara W. Tuchman looks at history in a unique way and draws lessons from what she sees. This accessible introduction to the subject of history offers striking insights into America's past and present, trenchant observations on the international scene, and thoughtful pieces on the historian's role. Here is a splendid body of work, the story of a lifetime spent "practicing history".
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Barbara Tuchman fan faced with reality
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From the best-selling and award-winning author of Paris 1919 comes a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, a fascinating portrait of Europe from 1900 up to the outbreak of World War I.
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Detailed review of 1882 to 1914
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The First Salute
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The prize-winning historian’s fresh look at the people and events that decided America’s struggle for independence. Its suspenseful climax is the 500-mile march undertaken by General Washington to surround Cornwallis at Yorktown.
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A different view of the American Revolution
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Practicing History—Selected Essays
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The critically-acclaimed historian’s insights, sense of humor, and sharp pen take on everything from Vietnam, Israel, and the Great War to writing history and its meaning. Includes these essays: Why Policy-Makers Do Not Listen; When Does History Happen?; Is History a Guide to the Future?; America as an Idea; How We Entered World War I; and more
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Amazing!
- By Havi Wingfield on 06-13-17
By: Barbara Tuchman
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Notes From China
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Two hundred years ago China's imperial rulers sensed a threat to a past-oriented society in the dynamism of the West and tried to frustrate foreign entry.
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Great Historian
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Paris 1919
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Winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize, renowned historian Margaret MacMillan's best-selling Paris 1919 is the story of six remarkable months that changed the world. At the close of WWI, between January and July of 1919, delegates from around the world converged on Paris under the auspices of peace. New countries were created, old empires were dissolved, and for six months, Paris was the center of the world.
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Good book, well narrated
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The Sleepwalkers
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The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 is historian Christopher Clark’s riveting account of the explosive beginnings of World War I. Drawing on new scholarship, Clark offers a fresh look at World War I, focusing not on the battles and atrocities of the war itself, but on the complex events and relationships that led a group of well-meaning leaders into brutal conflict.
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Excellent, but
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1913: In Search of the World Before the Great War
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Today, 1913 is inevitably viewed through the lens of 1914: as the last year before a war that would shatter the global economic order and tear Europe apart, undermining its global pre-eminence. Our perspectives narrowed by hindsight, the world of that year is reduced to its most frivolous features last summers in grand aristocratic residences or its most destructive ones: the unresolved rivalries of the great European powers, the fear of revolution, violence in the Balkans.
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Good book ruined by bad read
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A World Undone
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On a summer day in 1914, a nineteen-year-old Serbian nationalist gunned down Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. While the world slumbered, monumental forces were shaken. In less than a month, a combination of ambition, deceit, fear, jealousy, missed opportunities, and miscalculation sent Austro-Hungarian troops marching into Serbia, German troops streaming toward Paris, and a vast Russian army into war, with England as its ally. As crowds cheered their armies on, no one could guess what lay ahead in the First World War.
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A great book!
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The First World War
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The First World War created the modern world. A conflict of unprecedented ferocity, it abruptly ended the relative peace and prosperity of the Victorian era, unleashing such demons of the 20th century as mechanized warfare and mass death. It also helped to usher in the ideas that have shaped our times - modernism in the arts, new approaches to psychology and medicine, radical thoughts about economics and society - and in so doing shattered the faith in rationalism and liberalism that had prevailed in Europe since the Enlightenment.
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Best Military History of First World War
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What listeners say about The Proud Tower
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- mostlymaimonides
- 02-18-09
Remarkable Achievement
Tuchman's Proud Tower is both history and literary work of art. Her focus on the the high tide of the 2nd industrial revolution, the cult of progress, the rise of mass politics and the invention of the modern city, suggest an ambition closer to Gibbon recalling his beloved Romans than a world that is only a century past. And in a moral sense, this is the point of her work, the historical rupture of WW1 and all that it swept away. Tuchman's account of the Dreyfus Affair, Speaker of the House Thomas Reed's showdown with Congress and the death of Jaures are like perfect miniatures from Plutarch, each of them models and warnings about the end of a civilization.
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11 people found this helpful
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- William
- 05-30-14
A portrait of a gilded age
What did you love best about The Proud Tower?
The narrative is so engaging. So much ground is covered, so many names, places, movements and events are presented but they flow seamlessly together and never once are you overwhelmed.
What about Nadia May’s performance did you like?
It felt intimate. The tone and pacing was if an aunt or grandparent were talking to reading to you when you were a child (but never down to you by any stretch!). It was a flow of information that not at all a lecture.
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
Hidden sight is of course 20/20. Attitudes, ideas and actions were at times shocking. The Dreifus Affair was insane by ever stretch of the imagination.
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3 people found this helpful
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- A. M. Dirks
- 02-16-16
Insightful history
Very informative and good documented characterizations. Very interesting descriptions of The Hague and its formation.
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- jake
- 06-23-16
Adds textured context to a pivotal period of time
Hard to detract from this book at all, especially since it delivered completely on its promise. The narrator is a perfect match for Tuchman's work which may be the only reason I marked down the story - to show how good the narrator is. I recommend checking this pair out in Distant Mirror as well.
If you are looking for narrative with protagonists and the like, it's here, but you have to bring your imagination. this is a period piece, a snapshot of the subjective and immaterial that, for me, brings history to life.
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- Gregala
- 03-18-22
Simply outstanding
Barbara Tuchman was the complete package: erudite, elegant. She viewed her work as an art, and she tells stories that make history sing.
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- jansig
- 05-03-22
A wonderful survey
Tuchman creates a vivid portrayal of seemingly disparate topics that sum up the very nature of life in the two and one half decades before WW l. All the major forces that contributed to the status of the world’s condition in August 1914 are there. Even without a link to the coming war the momentous shifts of the old world of the 19th century to the new 20th century are spell binding.
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- ejb
- 01-15-23
Tuchman’
Of the four books written by Barbara Tuchman, I found this the most interesting. If you’ve liked Guns of August or March of Folly, you’ll enjoy her presentation here too.
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- Jaime
- 09-05-10
Masterful
As always with Barbara Tuchman a masterful, enlightening and instructive view on the selected period. In this case you get the feeling of living through the pre-war period. Some chapters are just an absolute please (e.g. first one on the English goverment & establishment, chapter on the Dreyfus affair in France). It is also commendable how taking ~8-9 different subjects and sticking to them the author manages to create a coherent tapestry of the period
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7 people found this helpful
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- Devilodg1969
- 07-14-18
The gone mad before it went truly mad!
How do you tell the story of how a world went mad in 1914? You start a quarter of a century before and begin the slow walk forward year by year with a list of the self serving, self absorbed Politicians, Socialists, Anarchists, Monarchists and a sprinkling of liberal democrats. Their world is spinning from their grasp and a new world is emerging due to ideas, technology, political systems and they can’t seem to understand how to do it peacefully. At the fringe of society are the Anarchists who are hell bent on destroying any system for the sake of destroying. Assassination seems to be the main focal point that the Anarchist see as a way to cause change. Socialist see strikes and unification across borders as the way for workers to cause change in the Capitalist system. Politicians seem almost inept as assassination spreads across the world... and the world is marching toward the cataclysmic event that will turn Europe and the world upside down for the next 100 years. It is the end of the Monarchists, the emergence of totalitarian rule and with a glimmer of hope that the liberal democracies will prevail. What has happened is that they have been swept up into August 1914 with no way out, you might say they never saw it coming but instead they lived it and should have seen all the warning signs. The book is good but not great unlike the Guns of August or March to Folly. It may be the subject matter or time period, it could have been a great time during this period of history but the good people did nothing and allowed evil to prevail.
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- Hyrum
- 05-21-12
An history of the past with relevance to today
Where does The Proud Tower rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
An excellent demonstration of how individual decisions and historical trends can combine to produce radical, and unpredictable, social and political changes. The book is relevant to the current debate between those who on the one side believe in historical necessity and those who believe in the power of human will to produce "hope and change."
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