Negative Positive
Title: Guns of August: compelling read
Review: Tuchman is "a writer of wit and grace" according to the New York Times. "She has a sardonic sense of humor and an original mind." I found her book about how WWI evolved, both compelling and repulsive. I gulped it in, as though inhaling halting breaths, engrossed in the horrific sadness of it all, putting the book down with a heavy and ponderous sigh, then picking it up again, needing to learn more. Tuchman's writing flows gracefully and she knows just how much detail to bring into this sweeping tale of a "tragedy of errors". Newsweek said it best, I think: "Tuchman is able to evoke both the enormous pattern of the tragedy and the minutiae which make it human" in what must surely be one of history's saddest moments.
Is the review positive or negative? 