The Guns of August

In 1962, the historian Barbara Tuchman published her work, The Guns of August. In it, she described the thirty days in August of 1914, when Europe's governments prodded their countries into a Great War. Germany and Austria-Hungary vs. the Allies: France, Great Britain, Russian, and the U.S.

One of Tuchman's book reviewers wrote, “The holocaust of August was the prelude to four bitter years of deadlocked war that cost a generation of European lives.”

Indeed, the Great War was horrific, and caused staggering losses, appalling atrocities. Never before had humankind seen the numbers of casu...