书名：The Guns of August八月炮火

作者：Barbara W. Tuchman巴巴拉·W.塔奇曼
出版社名称：Presidio Press
出版时间：2004
语种：英文
ISBN：9780345476098
商品尺寸：10.9 x 2.8 x 17.8 cm
包装：简装
页数：640

The Guns of August《八月炮火》用生动、直接的语言，暴露人类愚蠢却真实的细节描写，详细描画第1次世界大战首月战局与故事进程的清晰思路，让第1次世界大战的故事引人入胜。

第1次世界大战爆发的狂热内幕！
荒谬而真实，你所知道的一战，从未如此细入骨髓！
普利策奖经典历史著作！
一战首月，行动者粉墨登场，以主观之意操纵亿万生灵。大厦将倾，谁是溃堤之蚁？
Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time
The Proud Tower, the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Guns of August, and The Zimmerman Telegram comprise Barbara W. Tuchman's classic histories of the First World War era
In this landmark, Pulitzer Prize-winning account, renowned historian Barbara W. Tuchman re-creates the first month of World War I: thirty days in the summer of 1914 that determined the course of the conflict, the century, and ultimately our present world. Beginning with the funeral of Edward VII, Tuchman traces each step that led to the inevitable clash. And inevitable it was, with all sides plotting their war for a generation. Dizzyingly comprehensive and spectacularly portrayed with her famous talent for evoking the characters of the war's key players, Tuchman's magnum opus is a classic for the ages.

Praise for The Guns of August
“A brilliant piece of military history which proves up to the hilt the force of Winston Churchill's statement that the first month of World War I was 'a drama never surpassed.'”  — Newsweek
“More dramatic than fiction . . . a magnificent narrative—beautifully organized, elegantly phrased, skillfully paced and sustained.”—Chicago Tribune

“A fine demonstration that with sufficient art rather specialized history can be raised to the level of literature.”—The New York Times

“[The Guns of August] has a vitality that transcends its narrative virtues, which are considerable, and its feel for characterizations, which is excellent.”—The WallStreetJournal

八月炮火烧遍
四载生灵涂炭
那个八月，霞飞，毛奇，克卢克……粉墨登场 那个八月，按小时计，按分钟计
那个八月，人类历史上第1次世界大战拉开帷幕
那个八月，人类那样的自以为是
一些人在战争中崛起，操纵亿万生灵
在战场上布局，在战场下斗智
如同这只是一场游戏
本书用生动、直接的语言，暴露人类愚蠢却真实的细节描写，详细描画第1次世界大战首月战局与战事进程的清晰思路，让第1次世界大战的故事引人入胜，从高层的每一步设计，到士兵真实感受，从各国战略，到军官个人对战争的影响，丝毫不漏，娓娓道来，还原一个真实而有血肉的八月。
这些深谙政治游戏的上位者，用他们擅长的政治手段与军事谋略，一步步精心布置，驱使无数并不甘心情愿的军人百姓参与其中。这是一次自掘坟墓的狂热政治游戏。
一场应该可以避免、也没有一方真正希望发生、而且绝大多数人都认为不可能会发生的全面性战争拉开帷幕

巴巴拉·W.塔奇曼（Barbara W. Tuchman），美国著名历史学家，她写出了20世纪很好的历史作品。以《八月炮火》和《史迪威与美国在中国的经验》两次获得普利策奖。

从1956年到1988年，她共出版了10部作品：
《圣经与剑》（Bible and Sword, 1956）、《齐默尔曼电报》（TheZimmermann Telegram, 1958）、《八月炮火》（TheGuns of August, 1962）、《骄傲的城堡》（The Proud Tower, 1966）、《史迪威与美国在中国的经验》（Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1971）、《来自中国的函件》（Notes from China, 1972）、《遥远的镜子》（A DistantMirror, 1978）、《实践历史》（Practicing History, 1981）、《“荒唐”进行曲》（The March of Folly, 1984）、《第1次敬礼》（The First Salute, 1988）。

Barbara W. Tuchman (1912–1989) achieved prominence as a historian with The Zimmermann Telegram and international fame with The Guns of August—a huge bestseller and winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Her other works include Bible and Sword, The Proud Tower, Stilwell and theAmerican Experience in China(for which Tuchman was awarded a second Pulitzer Prize), Notes from China, A Distant Mirror, Practicing History, The March of Folly, and The First Salute.

So GORGEOUS was the spectacle on the May morning of 1910 when nine kings rode in the funeral of Edward VII of England that the crowd waiting in hushed and black-clad awe, could not keep back gasps of admiration. In scarlet and blue and green and purple, three by three the sovereigns rode through the palace gates, with plumed helmets, gold braid, crimson sashes, and jeweled orders flashing in the sun. After them came five heirs apparent, forty more imperial or royal highnesses, seven queens—four dowager and three regnant—and a scattering of special ambassadors from uncrowned countries. Together they represented seventy nations in the greatest assemblage of royalty and rank ever gathered in one place and of its kind, the last. The muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine by the clock as the cortege left the palace, but on history’s clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again.

In the center of the front row rode the new king. George V, flanked on his left by the Duke of Connaught. The late king’s only surviving brother, and on his right by a personage to whom, acknowledged The Times, “belongs the first place among all the foreign mourners.” who “even when relations are most strained has never lost his popularity amongst us”— William II, the German Emperor. Mounted on a gray horse, wearing the scarlet uniform of a British Field Marshal, carrying the baton of that rank, the Kaiser had composed his features behind the famous upturned mustache in an expression grave even to severity.” Of the several emotions churning his susceptible breast, some hints exist in his letters. “I am proud to call this place my home and to be a member of this royal family.’ he wrote home after spending the night in Windsor Castle in the former apartments of his mother. Sentiment and nostalgia induced by these melancholy occasions with his English relatives jostled with pride in his supremacy among the assembled potentates and with a fierce relish in the disappearance of his uncle from the European scene. He had come to bury Edward his bane: Edward the arch plotter, as William conceived it of Germany’s encirclement: Edward his mother’s brother whom he could neither bully nor impress, whose fat figure cast a shadow between Germany and the sun. “He is Satan. You cannot imagine what a Satan he is!”
This verdict, announced by the Kaiser before a dinner of three hundred guests in Berlin in 1907, was occasioned by one of Edward’s continental tours undertaken with clearly diabolical designs at encirclement. He had spent a provocative week in Paris, visited for no good reason the King of Spain (who had just married his niece), and finished with a visit to the King of Italy with obvious intent to seduce him from his Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria. The Kaiser, possessor of the least inhibited tongue in Europe, had worked himself into a frenzy ending in another of those comments that had periodically over the past twenty years of his reign shattered the nerves of diplomats.