The Guns of August, by Barbara Tuchman

Back in 2014, the first of the World War I centenary years, I decided to get informed about World War I since I knew so little about it and it is frequently cited as the cause of various negative developments in the modern world (not the least of which was World War II).  But I'm a procrastinator so it took three years to get my rear in gear.

This book served as a great start. It's a military history covering the first month of the war on the Western front, including the frantic diplomacy and negotiation on the few days before the outbreak of the war, particularly in Belgium.  It ends on the eve of the battle of the Marne.  Tuchman only dedicates two chapters on Eastern front battles (Gumbinnen and Tannenberg), and one on the pursuit of the German light cruiser Goeben in the Mediterranean which resulted in the Turkish alliance with Germany, so if you're looking for a history of the Eastern front and an account of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and his wife this is not it.

Tuchman is a skilled storyteller and includes just enough maps and technical information about military strategy and the technology of that time so a layman can understand the ramifications of the decisions made by the many generals, diplomats, monarchs, and politicians to whom he will be introduced. I had no problem following the progress of the war and learned a lot about the military thinking of the time. She also includes enough detail about the situations and people to draw the reader into the world of 1914. No mean feat.

Tombeau de la Rouerie, par Michel Mohrt

Ce livre est à la fois une courte introduction à la vie d'Armand Tuffin, Marquis de la Rouerie, et une réflexion sur les parallèles entre sa vie et celle de l’auteur, Michel Mohrt, aussi Breton, soldat français pendant la 2eme guerre mondiale.  Le Marquis de la Rouerie n’est pas assez connu aux Etats-Unis pour son service dans l’armée de Washington.  C’etait dans les livres et les discours de l’historien et journaliste autrichien, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, que j’ai appris quelque chose de lui pour la premiere fois.   Le marquis était un homme qui aimait la liberté, et comme Edmund Burke, il reconnaissait que la révolution française a ete détourné par un mouvement qui n’avait rien à voir avec les idées libérales de la guerre d’indépendence américaine.  Avec le comte de Noyan, il fondait l’association bretonne pour sauvegarder les libertés de sa province, quelle association deviendrait plus tard la Chouannerie dont le but était de renverser le gouvernement révolutionnaire.

L'Alsace Est-Elle Allemande Ou Française? Réponse A M. Mommsen

After reading La cité antique, I knew I found a new favorite author, so I was researching around the internet for other books he wrote.

This little pamphlet, whose title translates into: Is Alsace German or French? was written during the Franco-Prussian war as a response to some letters to the Italian press written by German historian Theodore Mommsen, which justified the Prussians taking the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine by insisting that the provinces should be a part of Germany due to the race and language of their inhabitants.  Fustel de Coulanges demolishes Mommsen's argument that race and language are what determine nationality and shows how other factors are much more important.  Great reading for those interested in the Franco-Prussian war, the aftermath of the 1866 war of the German League against Prussia, and in the historical events and ideas leading up to World Wars I & II.

For those who don't read French, I translated de Coulanges's text into English and posted it online in blog form.  Feel free to check it out here.  I included links to Fustel de Coulanges's original French text as well as to an English translation of Theodore Mommsen's letters, so you can get both sides of the debate.

Sur le paupérisme (Memoir on Pauperism), by Alexis de Tocqueville

This book contains 2 essays Tocqueville presented to the Royal Academic Society in Cherbourg in 1835 & 1838.  Both are about poverty and the pros and cons of various measures undertaken to alleviate it.

In the first part, Tocqueville outlines the paradox of the wealthier, more prosperous nations (e.g. Great Britain) having much larger percentages of their populations claiming poverty and getting on the dole than poorer nations have (such as France and Spain).  He talks about the Poor Laws (basically an early government welfare program), which originated under Elizabeth I after Henry VIII destroyed the monasteries and seized their property, leaving the English poor without recourse, charitable works having once been one of the functions of the Church.  By Elizabeth I's time, the problem was so bad that the Poor Laws were passed, which made it the responsibility of each town council to tax their residents to support the poor in that town.  Tocqueville outlines the corrupting effects of these laws both on the poor and on those who are taxed to support them. He sat as an observer in a court of a British justice of the peace, where these poverty cases were heard, and his observations are as logical and as prescient as those in <i>Democracy in America</i>.

The second part is about the advantages and disadvantages of the French <i>caisse d'épargne</i>, a sort of special savings bank reserved for the poor.  It pays a higher interest rate than normal and it is meant to teach the poor to practice thrift and acquire habits of capital accumulation.  Tocqueville gives a very clear explanation how this institution works and his thoughts about it such that even a non-economist like me found it easy to follow.

I highly recommend this slim little book to anyone interested in the problem of poverty and the ways in which various solutions to the problem that look good on the surface can make it worse.

Update 8/22/16: In order to make this book more accessible to English speakers, as well as to practice my language skills, I decided to start translating this book into English and post it online in blog form.  You can access it <a href="http://tocquevillememoironpauperism.blogspot.com/2016/08/first-memoir-on-pauperism-first-part.html">here</a>.  It is not finished yet, but I plan to post a part of it every day until I get through!