The Proud Tower

I shared a while ago that I was reading Barbara Tuchman’s The Proud Tower. Well, it’s a pretty long book but I finished it a few days ago and finally feel ready to share a few words about it. You could argue that I’ve actually read another book in the interim (a Jeffrey Deaver book I just finished) and that I’m jetlagged and hanging around in Seattle airport on the way to Honolulu. You certainly could make that argument. I really liked The Proud Tower. I don’t think I enjoyed it as much as The Guns of August but that’s because it didn’t have as much of a single linear narrative. It was great to see the anarchists, the socialists and the traditionalists, and to imagine them overlapping. The feeling of a clash of ideas comes through really clearly and it’s interesting to see the ideas passing between the major European countires (and America…which is whatever). Tuchman describes a lot of people as being incredible orators…either it was an era of unusually good oration (possible), or she…