Barbara Tuchman
Barbara Tuchman
Barbara Wertheim Tuchmanwas an American historian and author. She won the Pulitzer Prize twice, for The Guns of August, a best-selling history of the prelude to and the first month of World War I, and Stilwell and the American Experience in China, a biography of General Joseph Stilwell...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionHistorian
Date of Birth30 January 1912
CountryUnited States of America
book civilization literature-history
Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled.
children light law
To ensure that no one gained an advantage over anyone else, commercial law [in the 14th century] prohibited innovation in tools or techniques, underselling below a fixed price, working late by artificial light, employing extra apprentices or wife and underage children, and advertising of wares or praising them to the detriment of others.
peace history historical
In individuals as in nations, contentment is silent, which tends to unbalance the historical record.
women church devil
Woman [in the 14th century] was the Church's rival, the temptress, the distraction, the obstacle to holiness, the Devil's decoy.
friendship roots common
Friendship of a kind that cannot easily be reversed tomorrow must have its roots in common interests and shared beliefs.
husband men stories
While husbands and lovers in the stories [of the 14th century] are of all kinds, ranging from sympathetic to disgusting, women are invariably deceivers: inconstant, unscrupulous, quarrelsome, querulous, lecherous, shameless, although not necessarily all of these at once.
women worry desire
The nastiness of women [in the 14th century] was generally perceived at the close of life when a man began to worry about hell, and his sexual desire in any case fading.
eyebrows female habit
No female iniquity was more severely condemned [in the 14th century] than the habit of plucking eyebrows and the hairline to heighten the forehead.
war hindsight certain
in the midst of war and crisis nothing is as clear or as certain as it appears in hindsight
confusion heirs absence
Of all the ills that our poor ... society is heir to, the focal one, it seems to me, from which so much of our uneasiness and confusion derive, is the absence of standards.
history completeness
Completeness is rare in history ...
pain emotion century
[T]he obverse of facile emotion in the 14th century was a general insensitivity to the spectacle of pain and death.
attention should reader
The writer's object is - or should be - to hold the reader's attention.
war interesting prevention
The conduct of war was so much more interesting than its prevention.