"More dramtatic than fiction ... THE GUNS OF AUGUST is a magnificent narrative--beautifully organized, elegantly phrased, skillfully paced and sustained ... The product of painstaking and sophisticated research." CHICAGO TRIBUNE Historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Barbara Tuchman has brought to life again the people and events that led up to World War I. With attention to fascinating detail, and an intense knowledge of her subject and its characters, Ms. Tuchman reveals, for the first time, just how the war started, why, and why it could have been stopped but wasn't. A classic historical survey of a time and a people we all need to know more about, THE GUNS OF AUGUST will not be forgotten. A definitive Pulitzer Prize-winning recreation of the powderkeg that was Europe during the crucial first thirty days of World War I traces the actions of statesmen and patriots alike in Berlin, London, St. Petersburg, and Paris.

Originally published: New York : Macmillan, 1962. With new foreword.

Author's Note -- Illustrations -- Maps -- A Funeral -- Plans -- "Let the Last Man on the Right Brush the Channel with his Sleeve" -- The Shadow of Sedan -- "A Single British Soldier ..." -- The Russian Steam Roller -- Outbreak -- Outbreak -- August 1: Berlin -- August 1: Paris and London -- Ultimatum in Brussels -- "Home Before the Leaves Fall" -- Battle -- "Goeben ... An Enemy Then Flying" -- Liege and Alsace -- BEF to the Continent -- Sambre et Meuse -- Debacle: Lorraine, Ardennes, Charleroi, Mons -- "The Cossacks Are Coming!" -- Tannenberg -- The Flames of Louvain -- Blue Water, Blockade, and the Great Neutral -- Retreat -- The Front Is Paris -- Von Kluck's Turn -- "Gentlemen, We Will Fight on the Marne" -- Afterword -- Sources.