The proud tower : a portrait of the world before the war, 1890-1914
(Book)

Originally published: Macmillan Co., 1966.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 521-563) and index.

During the fateful quarter century leading up to World War I, the climax of a century of rapid, unprecedented change, a privileged few enjoyed Olympian luxury as the underclass was "heaving in its pain, its power, and its hate." Historian Barbara W. Tuchman brings the era to vivid life: the decline of the Edwardian aristocracy; the Anarchists of Europe and America; Germany and its self-depicted hero, Richard Strauss; Diaghilev's Russian ballet and Stravinsky's music; the Dreyfus Affair; the Peace Conferences in The Hague; and the enthusiasm and tragedy of Socialism, epitomized by the assassination of Jean Jaurè s on the night the Great War began and an epoch came to a close.