Barbara W. Tuchman

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File:William Shirer (Left), Barbara Tuchman (Center), and John Eisenhower at the Conference on Research and World War II and the National Archives, June 14-15, 1971.jpg

Tuchman with William L. Shirer (left) and John Eisenhower (right) in 1971

Barbara Wertheim Tuchman (Template:IPAc-en; January 30, 1912 – February 6, 1989) was an American historian, journalist and author. She won the Pulitzer Prize twice, for The Guns of August (1962), a best-selling history of the prelude to and the first month of World War I, and Stilwell and the American Experience in China (1971), a biography of General Joseph Stilwell.<ref name=pulitzer>Template:Cite web</ref>

Tuchman focused on writing popular history.

Early years

Barbara Wertheim was born January 30, 1912, the daughter of the banker Maurice Wertheim and his first wife Alma Morgenthau. Her father was an individual of wealth and prestige, the owner of The Nation magazine, president of the American Jewish Committee, prominent art collector, and a founder of the Theatre Guild.<ref name=Pollack>Oliver B. Pollack, "Barbara W. Tuchman (1912–1989)," in Paula E. Hyman and Deborah Dash Moore (eds.), Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia: Volume II, M–Z. New York: Routledge, 1997; pp. 1414–1416.</ref> Her mother was the daughter of Henry Morgenthau, Woodrow Wilson's ambassador to the Ottoman Empire.<ref name=Pollack />

While she did not explicitly mention it in her 1962 book The Guns of August, Tuchman was present for one of the pivotal events of the book: the pursuit of the German battle cruiser Goeben and light cruiser Breslau. In her account of the pursuit she wrote, "That morning [August 10, 1914] there arrived in Constantinople the small Italian passenger steamer which had witnessed the GloucesterTemplate:'s action against Goeben and Breslau. Among its passengers were the daughter, son-in-law and three grandchildren of the American ambassador Mr. Henry Morgenthau."<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> She was a grandchild of Henry Morgenthau; she is referring to herself. This is confirmed in her later book Practicing History,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> in which she tells the story of her father, Maurice Wertheim, traveling from Constantinople to Jerusalem on August 29, 1914, to deliver funds to the Jewish community there. Thus, at two, Tuchman was present during the pursuit of Goeben and Breslau, which she documented 48 years later.Template:Cn

Wertheim was influenced at an early age by the books of Lucy Fitch Perkins and G. A. Henty, as well as the historical novels of Alexandre Dumas.<ref name="Pollack" /> She attended the Walden School on Manhattan's Upper West Side.<ref name="bankruptcy">Template:Cite news</ref> She received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Radcliffe College in 1933, having studied history and literature.<ref name="Pollack" />

Researcher and journalist

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.<ref name=Pollack /> 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.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite news</ref>

In 1940, Wertheim married Lester R. Tuchman (1904–1997), an internist, medical researcher and professor of clinical medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in Manhattan. They had three daughters, including Jessica Mathews, who became president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

During the years of World War II, Tuchman worked in the Office of War Information.<ref name=Pollack /> Following the war, Tuchman spent the next decade working to raise her children while doing basic research for what would ultimately become the 1956 book Bible and Sword: England and Palestine from the Bronze Age to Balfour.<ref name=Pollack />

Historian

With the publication of Bible and Sword in 1956, Tuchman dedicated herself to historical research and writing, turning out a new book approximately every four years.<ref name=Pollack /> Rather than feeling hampered by the lack of an advanced degree in history, Tuchman argued that freedom from the rigors and expectations of academia was actually liberating. She said that the norms of academic writing would have "stifled any writing capacity."<ref name=Pollack />

Tuchman favored a literary approach to the writing of history, providing eloquent explanatory narratives rather than concentration upon discovery and publication of fresh archival sources. In the words of one biographer, Tuchman was "not a historian's historian; she was a layperson's historian who made the past interesting to millions of readers".<ref>The words are those of Oliver B. Pollack in Paula E. Hyman and Deborah Dash Moore (eds.), Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, p. 1415.</ref>

In 1971, Tuchman received the St. Louis Literary Award from the Saint Louis University Library Associates.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In 1978, Tuchman was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.<ref name=AAAS>Template:Cite web</ref> She became the first female president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1979.<ref name=NYT022779>Template:Cite news</ref> She won a U.S. National Book Award in History<ref>This was the 1980 award for paperback History. From 1980 to 1983 in National Book Award history there were dual hardcover and paperback awards in most categories, and multiple nonfiction subcategories. Most of the paperback award-winners were reprints, including this one.</ref> for the first paperback edition of A Distant Mirror in 1980.<ref name=nba1980>Template:Cite web</ref> Also in 1980 Tuchman gave the National Endowment for the Humanities' (NEH) Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities. Tuchman's lecture was titled "Mankind's Better Moments".<ref name="jefflect">Template:Cite book</ref>

Tuchman was a trustee of Radcliffe College and a lecturer at Harvard University, the University of California, and the Naval War College. Although she never received a graduate degree in history, Tuchman was the recipient of a number of honorary degrees from leading American universities, including Yale University, Harvard University, New York University, Columbia University, Boston University, and Smith College, among others.<ref name=Pollack />

Death and legacy

Tuchman died in 1989 in Greenwich, Connecticut, following a stroke, exactly one week after her 77th birthday.<ref name=Pollack />

A tower of Currier House, a residential division first of Radcliffe College and now of Harvard College, was named in Tuchman's honor.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Tuchman's Law

In the introduction to her 1978 book A Distant Mirror, Tuchman playfully identified a historical phenomenon which she termed "Tuchman's Law", to wit:

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Tuchman's Law has been defined as a psychological principle of "perceptual readiness" or "subjective probability" and one that is a useful guide in how to align with our subjective misunderstanding of the world's dangers fueled by television and other media where random but rare acts of violence seem more prevalent than the much higher rates of violence and harm that stem, for example, from white collar crime and corporate decisions.<ref>Texas Research Institute of Mental Sciences, Violence and the Violent Individual: Proceedings of the Twelfth Annual Symposium, Texas Research Institute of Mental Sciences, Houston, Texas, November 1–3, 1979. Spectrum Publications, p. 412-413</ref>

Bibliography

Books

The Lost British Policy: Britain and Spain Since 1700. London: United Editorial, 1938. Template:OCLC
Bible and Sword: England and Palestine from the Bronze Age to Balfour. New York: New York University Press, 1956. Template:OCLC
The Zimmermann Telegram: America Enters The War, 1917 – 1918. New York: Viking Press, 1958. Template:OCLC online
The Guns of August. New York: Macmillan, 1962. Template:OCLC
The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World before the War, 1890–1914. New York: Macmillan, 1966. Template:ISBN
Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911–45 New York: Macmillan, 1971. Template:OCLC
Notes from China. New York: Collier, 1972. Template:OCLC
A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978. Template:ISBN
Practicing History: Selected Essays. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981. Template:ISBN
The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam. New York: Knopf/Random House, 1984. Template:ISBN
The First Salute: A View of the American Revolution. New York: Knopf/Random House, 1988. Template:ISBN

Other works

America's Security in the 1980s. London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1982.
The Book: A Lecture Sponsored by the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress and the Authors’ League of America, Presented at the Library of Congress, October 17, 1979. Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1980.

References

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External links

Barbara Wertheim Tuchman papers (MS 574). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library. [1]

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