Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Knopf
Date Published: 1984
ISBN-13:9780394527772ISBN:0394527771
Description: Good in Good jacket. First Edition. Books rated "Good" may have some notes, underlining, or highlighting. These books also may contain the previous owner's name, stamp, sticker, or gift inscription, or may be library discards. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Knopf
Date Published: 1984
ISBN-13:9780394527772ISBN:0394527771
Description: Good in Good jacket. 321-U Books rated "Good" may have some notes, underlining, or highlighting. These books also may contain the previous owner's name, stamp, sticker, or gift inscription, or may be library discards. read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Fair. Dust Cover Missing. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
"This is the 3rd book that I have read by Barbara Tuchman and I find that she is very thoughtful historian. I suppose that when you are writing and researching events after the fact, it does allow you be thoughtful and opinionated as in the case of this book. I had this book for quite awhile and decided to read it because of the 2nd Iraq War and the passing of Robert MacNamara, one of the tacticians of the escalation of the VietNam War. If Barbara Tuchman were alive, would she find folly in the executions of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Perhaps, she would find that the war in Afghanistan started in the national interest, but because we took our eye off this prize, we our now mired down in an extended campaign with no end in sight. These are same people who battled the Soviet Union. I guess this falls under wooden-headedness and/or having a short-memory span. The U.S. did not pick up and/or decided to ignore any intelligence of value that would have assisted its efforts about the people Afghanistan or the land. Al Queda knows the terrain and like VietNam, they seem to keep coming. Once again, there is body-count being used to measure the war. With this war, there is still the support of the American people because we believe that we were truly wronged.
The 2nd Iraq War is whole different animal. It has all of the trappings of the Vietnam: political lying and intimidation; ideological hawks; wooden-headedness; failure to weigh differences of opinion; failure to act in the Nation's self-interest; failure to understand the people of the region. If you could swap characters, here are some names to consider: Presidents Johnson (escalation) and George W Bush, both from Texas; John Foster Dulles (ideologue) and Dick Cheyney; Robert MacNamara and Donald Rumsfeld; Dean Rusk and Condoleeza Rice. Other people may have different historical matches, but I thought that these seemed to good matches."
"It was good, but not by her standards. Episodic and a bit shallow. I expected more of a systematic look at historical folly, but she just picked out 4 cases(Troy, The Renaissance Popes, Georgian England, Vietnam) and covered those more or less well. The middle two cases were really good and taught me stuff I didn't already know, the other two were fairly indifferent."
"This is an eminently readable history book for the non-academic, as well as an excellent example of academic writing for historians; Tuchman uses three "well-known" historic episodes to exemplify how what we know is conditioned by how we are taught it."
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