Discover the Best Books Written by Barbara W. Tuchman

Barbara Wertheim Tuchman was an American self-trained historian, author, and double Pulitzer Prize winner. She became best known for The Guns of August (1962), a history of the prelude and the first month of World War I. As an author, Tuchman focused on producing popular history. Her clear, dramatic storytelling covered topics as diverse as the 14th century and World War I and sold millions of copies.

Following graduation, Wertheim worked as a volunteer research assistant at the Institute of Pacific Relations in New York, spending a year in Tokyo in 1934–35, including a month in China, then returning to the United States via the Trans Siberian Railway to Moscow and on to Paris. She also contributed to The Nation as a correspondent until her father's sale of the publication in 1937, traveling to Valencia and Madrid to cover the Spanish Civil War A first book resulted from her Spanish experience, The Lost British Policy: Britain and Spain Since 1700, published in 1938.