content: I picked this book up after having read it decades before. The writing and analysis remains as crisp as when I first read it. I believe the strengths of the book are in the great amount of details provided about the military blunders that occured on both sides during the first month of WWI. Its really an always-topical cautionary tale of how egos, a reluctance to engage in diplomacy, all coupled with the fog of war, can play havoc with the best of plans. The weakness of the book is in getting a better sense of the German perspective other than with Tuchaman's occassion expressions on the essence of the German people. Tuchman does give equal play to the German strategy but she falls into far too much stereotype about the German "character". While she doesn't dwell on it, she seems all too comfortable in explaning German acts as part of the German belief that efficiency trumps humanity, as an example.