The Proud Tower
Book by Barbara W. TuchmanWikipedia
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Search complete. 8 mentions across 7 episodes found for "The Proud Tower".
Oct 17, 2026
Brandon WeichertHOST
She has two phenomenal books.
Brandon WeichertHOST
They are the definitive, in my opinion, books on World War I, which is, uh, the, the, The Proud Tower, and the, obviously The Guns of August.
Brandon WeichertHOST
Read Adam Tooze, who we should get on.
Brandon WeichertHOST
I'm a big fan of his.
Brandon WeichertHOST
She has two phenomenal books.
Brandon WeichertHOST
They are the definitive, in my opinion, books on World War I, which is, uh, the, the, The Proud Tower, and the, obviously The Guns of August.
Brandon WeichertHOST
Read Adam Tooze, who we should get on.
Brandon WeichertHOST
I'm a big fan of his.
EthanHOST
...
EthanHOST
I was-- I, I, I started a book called The Proud Tower, which is a, uh, by a historian, Barbara, um, uh-
AlexHOST
Barbara
EthanHOST
...
Mark PainterHOST
Listener Kathy asked me how I choose my source material.
Mark PainterHOST
This is a question I'm a little leery about answering, because I know there are people waiting to pounce and tell me, that was a terrible source to use, how could you possibly not have used this much better one over here? I've already acknowledged my debts to Barbara Tuchman and Jacob Bronowski, and particularly their books The Proud Tower and The Ascent of Man, respectively.
Mark PainterHOST
I should also mention Mary McAuliffe's Twilight of the Belle Epoque.
Mark PainterHOST
I used the Tuchman and McAuliffe books as sources back at the Belle Epoque days of the podcast, not so much The Ascent of Man because that book spans a much wider history, but I cite these books not so much because they were useful resources as because they showed me how I wanted to talk about history in this podcast.
Will TannerHOST
The great landed estates had been broken up in a reversal of centuries of accumulation.
Will TannerHOST
The government led by Lord Salisbury was the last government in the Western world to possess all the attributes of aristocracy and working condition, as Barbara Tuchman writes in The Proud Tower.
Will TannerHOST
When its time in power ended in 1902, the Salisbury administrations, the period of aristocratic dominance of the government was over for good, and soon even aristocratic involvement at the local and national levels on the decline.
Will TannerHOST
In much the same way, the dawn of the 20th century saw the landed elite fighting against the plutocrats to maintain its place atop society and cultural life.
Rudyard LynchHOST
Who was the auth- Barbara Tuchman.
Rudyard LynchHOST
Barbara Tuchman, um, she wrote a book called The Proud Tower about what Europe was like before World War I, and the statistical majority of the people in positions of power in Britain were aristocrats.
Rudyard LynchHOST
And because the, the way the aristocracy worked was a huge amount of them were of American ancestry, where Winston Churchill, who was one of the youngest PMs in, in the British Parliament, he was, like, 24 when he got elected, um, because he was a war hero and a bestselling author.
Rudyard LynchHOST
Um, he, he was of American ancestry, or his m- his mom was American.
Amanda WilliamsHOST
It makes me think about that quote from, I think it's Barbara Tuchman.
Amanda WilliamsHOST
It's either in Guns of August or The Proud Tower, where she talks about proud, confident Europe and the world tearing itself apart
Hunter McPhersonGUEST
in this
Amanda WilliamsHOST
war.
Amanda WilliamsHOST
And I think that I know in The Proud Tower, I mean, she talks a little bit about obviously some of the problems beginning to emerge, but just the sense that there's such progress, things are still going to get better.
Amanda WilliamsHOST
And yet in the end, it doesn't seem to turn out that way.
Amanda WilliamsHOST
Right.