Humanity in print

“Books are humanity in print.  Books are carriers of civilization.  Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.” 

– Barbara Tuchman 

My newest novel is historical fiction.  I’ve always loved history, especially when presented in the palatable manner that Barbara Tuchman had for the topic.  A two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, her work has sold hundreds of thousands of copies, led by her 1962 best-selling award winner The Guns of August (a prelude to and first month of World War I), and her 1970 biography on the World War II General Joseph Stilwell. 
 

In 1978, she wrote the wonderful A Distant Mirror about the calamitous 14^th Century but considered reflective of the 20^th, especially in the horrors of war.  That book, too, led the New York Times best seller list and was a finalist for yet another Pulitzer.

Tuchman began her career in the 1930s as a journalist and in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, became one of the few women – along with Martha Gelhorn (and more about her in a later post) working as a war correspondent – reporting for The Nation.

  

Barbara Tuchman -- born today in 1912

In 1980, not long before her death, the National Endowment for the Humanities selected her for the Jefferson Lecture, the federal government’s highest honor for achievement in the humanities.  Tuchman focused her lecture on “Mankind’s Better Moments,” many of which appeared in the  20 books she wrote for us as a lasting historical legacy.

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