The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam is a book by Barbara W. Tuchman, an American historian and author. It was published on March 19, 1984, by Knopf in New York.
The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam is a book by Barbara W. Tuchman, an American historian and author. It was published on March 19, 1984, by Knopf in New York.
The book is about "one of the most compelling paradoxes of history: the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests". [1] It details four major instances of government folly in human history: the Trojans' decision to move the Greek horse into their city, the failure of the Renaissance popes to address the factors that would lead to the Protestant Reformation in the early sixteenth century, England's policies relating to American colonies under King George III, and the United States' mishandling of the conflict in Vietnam. [2] [3] More than half of the book deals with US intervention in the Vietnam War, while the other three case studies are shorter. [3]
The book was described by Foreign Affairs as "in the Tuchman tradition: readable, entertaining, intelligent. It should lead a wide audience to think usefully about "the persistence of error."" [3]
The New York Review of Books reacted favorably to the book, stating: "Systems and theories therefore should not be imposed on the past. The facts of the past should be allowed to speak for themselves. Why did history have to teach lessons anyway? “Why,” she asked with some exasperation, “cannot history be studied and written and read for its own sake, as the record of human behavior…?” History is not a science, it is an art. History needs writers, or artists, who can communicate the past to readers, and that has been Tuchman's calling." [4] [ clarification needed ]
Kirkus Reviews wrote in a Feb 15, 1984 review, "An exercise in historical interpretation such as this, tracing a single idea through a set of examples, is structured toward [Tuchman's] weaknesses; and they are only too apparent. Tuchman applies the concept of folly to 'historical mistakes' with certain features in common: the policy taken was contrary to self-interest; it was not that of an individual (attributable to the individual's character), but that of a group; it was not the only policy available; and it was pursued despite forebodings that it was mistaken. The only way to account for such self-destructive policies, in Tuchman's view, is to label them follies; but that, as she seems unaware, puts them beyond rational explanation." [5]
In a May 1984 review in The New Criterion , Paul Johnson criticized the book as having followed "the conventional, not to say threadbare, lines which the liberal media developed in the 1970s: that American involvement in Vietnam was, ab initio, an error which compounded itself as it increased and was certain to fail all along. [Tuchman] thereby falls into a trap which a historian who seeks to draw lessons from the past should be particularly careful to avoid: to assume that what in the end did happen, had to happen." [6]
In The New York Times , Christopher Lehmann-Haupt wrote, "[A]ny way one approaches The March of Folly, it is unsatisfying, to say the least. Better books have been written about Vietnam, the American Revolution, the Renaissance Popes and the Trojan Horse." He concluded, "Not only has [Tuchman] confined herself to the shallower wellsprings of history, she has committed the further sin of treating them superficially." [2]
The book was also reviewed by History Today . [1]
Barbara Wertheim Tuchman 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.
The Boys of Summer is a 1972 non-fiction baseball book by Roger Kahn. After recounting his childhood in Brooklyn and his life as a young reporter on the New York Herald Tribune, the author relates some history of the Brooklyn Dodgers up to their victory in the 1955 World Series. He then tracks the lives of the players over the subsequent years as they aged. The title of the book is taken from a Dylan Thomas poem that describes "the boys of summer in their ruin".
William Irwin Thompson was an American social philosopher, cultural critic, and poet. He received the Oslo International Poetry Festival Award in 1986. He described his writing and speaking style as "mind-jazz on ancient texts". He was the founder of the Lindisfarne Association, which proposed the study and realization of a new planetary culture.
The Certificate is a novel by Isaac Bashevis Singer, published in English in 1992. David Bendinger, a poor, young Yiddish writer wishes to emigrate to Palestine from Poland, and because married couples are given preference, he tries to arrange for a marriage certificate to be purchased for him by a wealthy woman whose fiancee lives in Palestine. The narrative deals with the abject poverty of David, as well as his Jewish heritage, and details the rise of both Communism and Zionism.
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt was an American journalist, editor of the New York Times Book Review, critic, and novelist, based in New York City. He served as senior Daily Book Reviewer from 1969 to 1995.
Brothers is a thriller novel by William Goldman. It is the sequel to his 1974 novel Marathon Man and is Goldman's final novel.
The Haj is a novel published in 1984 by American author Leon Uris that tells the story of the birth of Israel from the viewpoint of a Palestinian Arab.
Kathryn Harrison is an American author. She has published seven novels, two memoirs, two collections of personal essays, a travelogue, two biographies, and a book of true crime. She reviews regularly for The New York Times Book Review. Her personal essays have been included in many anthologies and have appeared in Bookforum, Harper's Magazine, More Magazine, The New Yorker, O, The Oprah Magazine, and Vogue, Salon, and Nerve.
Anthony Bruce Summers is an Irish author. He is a Pulitzer Prize Finalist and has written ten non-fiction books. He worked for the BBC in current affairs coverage as a producer and then as an assistant editor of the long-running investigative documentary series Panorama. His first book was published in 1976.
Joshua Then and Now is a Canadian novel written by Mordecai Richler, published in 1980 by McClelland and Stewart. A semi-autobiographical novel, the book is based his life on his neighborhood growing up in Montreal, Quebec, and tells of the life of a writer. Richler later adapted the novel into the feature film Joshua Then and Now, starring James Woods, Alan Arkin, and Gabrielle Lazure; directed by Ted Kotcheff who had previously directed Richler's The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz.
Atheneum Books was a New York City publishing house established in 1959 by Alfred A. Knopf, Jr., Simon Michael Bessie and Hiram Haydn. Simon & Schuster has owned Atheneum properties since its acquisition of Macmillan in 1994 and it created Atheneum Books for Young Readers as an imprint for children's books in the 2000s.
The Imperial Presidency is a nonfiction book by historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. It was published in 1973 by Houghton Mifflin and reissued in 2004. The book details the history of the presidency of the United States from its conception by the Founding Fathers through the latter half of the 20th century, primarily in the aspects of war powers. Schlesinger's book popularized the term imperial presidency to describe excesses of executive power. The Imperial Presidency has been described as "the most prominent school of thought on executive war powers" and "a lens through which to understand and critique the executive branch in the post-9/11 world".
Alan Axelrod is an American author of history, business and management books. As of October 2018, he had written more than 150 books. Axelrod resides in Atlanta, Georgia.
Walter Allan McDougall is an American historian, currently a professor of history and the Alloy-Ansin Professor of International Relations at the University of Pennsylvania.
The Art Lesson is a 1989 children's picture book by Tomie dePaola. The book was published by Trumpet Publishing and deals with the theme of compromise. The Art Lesson was met with a positive reception by critics and was one of the New York Times's "Best Picture Books Of the Year for Children" in 1989.
Ancient History: A Paraphase is Joseph McElroy's third novel, published in 1971. It presents itself as a hastily written essay/memoir/confession. The character Dom is sometimes described as a fictionalized Norman Mailer.
Tough Guys Don't Dance (1984) is a noir thriller and murder mystery novel by American writer Norman Mailer reminiscent of the works of Dashiell Hammett, Mickey Spillane, and Raymond Chandler. The novel was written in only two months in order to fulfill a contractual obligation. The book was adapted into a film, directed by Mailer, in 1987.
Laurence Shames is an American writer.
Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure is a 1996 book by journalist Dan Baum, a Wall Street Journal reporter. Among the topics considered are the perception of a national "drug problem" involving cannabis, leveraged by the Nixon Administration to launch the War on Drugs, and later administrations' preoccupation with the phenomenon of the crack baby while failing to address other urgent prenatal health needs.
Hellmut Otto Emil Lehmann-Haupt was a German-American author, academic, bibliography expert, and rare books expert. After World War II, he worked with the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program, commonly known as the Monuments Men.