Rating: 
Summary: Not very interesting
Review: I enjoy reading history books, but this book was just boring.
Rating: 
Summary: pleasurable read...
Review: I enjoyed this book in audiobook format, read by Grover Gardner, a regular voice talent in audiobooks.I have enjoyed Tuchman's other works before (Proud Tower, Practicing History, and the magnum opus, The Guns of August) This work was good; True , not on par with _Guns_ or P.T. but nobody hits home-runs ALL the time. It was stimulating history writing, often amusing. I don't always agree with Tuchman's views, and her less than charitable words for the Vietnam era American "New Left" were most puzzling, given her criticism of government policy on Vietnam. But I can still recommend the book.
Rating:
Summary: Very, very good...
Review: I would have liked to to have said great, but like others I feel this work does not quite meet the standard set by The Guns of August and her study of Stillwell. Still, Tuckman's storytelling ability comes through and I enjoyed every section. Her piece on Viet Nam may upset some readers. As a resident in Japan,@‚ham contantly encountering historicle revisionism from the locals concerning their aggerssion and folly in World War Two and I fear that some Americans wish do the same with our great mistake in Viet Nam. Tuckman provides one of the best analyses to date about this great tragedy.
Rating:
Summary: The more things change, the more they stay the same . . .
Review: In "The March of Folly," Barbara Tuchman attempts to analyze the whys and wherefores of government's apparent insistence on the pursuit of policy that is contrary to its self-interest. From the loss of Troy through the acceptance of the Trojan Horse to the corruption of the Renaissance Popes leading to the Reformation to the British losing the American colonies to America's military involvement in Southeast Asia, Tuchman searches for the common thread behind these disasters. Tuchman, as ever, gets the highest marks for her command of historical detail and for her clear, incisive writing style. "March of Folly" is a lean, mean 400+ pages, unencumbered by extraneous or irrelevant details. But while dense, Tuchman is always highly readable, making her one of the most accessible of the great historians. Unlike so many histories, this is a book that can be enjoyed and understood outside of a library. The only problem with the book is that by analyzing four exemplary exercises in myopia, Tuchman comes across as sadly shaking her head, saying "You should have known better." This tsk-tsking is generally warranted -- just look at the results of each episode -- but the book would have been better had Tuchman done more to acknowledge the relative ease of connecting the dots from her late 20th century vantage point. Slight notes of superiority notwithstanding, Tuchman's thesis is a noteworthy one -- why do governments pursue policies contrary to their self-interest in the face of such (in hindsight) obvious evidence to the contrary? Pride is, unfortunately, all too often a leading cause. While Tuchman's analysis is necessarily weakest when dealing with the fall of Troy due to lack of source material, Tuchman's analysis of the other episodes is down-right masterful. (For a more detailed Tuchman analysis of the American Revolution, check out her "First Salute," a wonderful book.) While Tuchman provides a decent grounding in each episode, and definitely enough to understand her thesis, the reader would obviously benefit from reading up a little bit on each episode prior to working through "March of Folly."
Rating:
Summary: The more things change, the more they stay the same . . .
Review: In "The March of Folly," Barbara Tuchman attempts to analyze the whys and wherefores of government's apparent insistence on the pursuit of policy that is contrary to its self-interest. From the loss of Troy through the acceptance of the Trojan Horse to the corruption of the Renaissance Popes leading to the Reformation to the British losing the American colonies to America's military involvement in Southeast Asia, Tuchman searches for the common thread behind these disasters. Tuchman, as ever, gets the highest marks for her command of historical detail and for her clear, incisive writing style. "March of Folly" is a lean, mean 400+ pages, unencumbered by extraneous or irrelevant details. But while dense, Tuchman is always highly readable, making her one of the most accessible of the great historians. Unlike so many histories, this is a book that can be enjoyed and understood outside of a library. The only problem with the book is that by analyzing four exemplary exercises in myopia, Tuchman comes across as sadly shaking her head, saying "You should have known better." This tsk-tsking is generally warranted -- just look at the results of each episode -- but the book would have been better had Tuchman done more to acknowledge the relative ease of connecting the dots from her late 20th century vantage point. Slight notes of superiority notwithstanding, Tuchman's thesis is a noteworthy one -- why do governments pursue policies contrary to their self-interest in the face of such (in hindsight) obvious evidence to the contrary? Pride is, unfortunately, all too often a leading cause. While Tuchman's analysis is necessarily weakest when dealing with the fall of Troy due to lack of source material, Tuchman's analysis of the other episodes is down-right masterful. (For a more detailed Tuchman analysis of the American Revolution, check out her "First Salute," a wonderful book.) While Tuchman provides a decent grounding in each episode, and definitely enough to understand her thesis, the reader would obviously benefit from reading up a little bit on each episode prior to working through "March of Folly."
Rating:
Summary: Literature or a Study of History
Review: In her work The March of Folley, Barbara Tuchman pursues several well known examples of misgovernment through folly in order to prove that governments purse "policies contrary to their own self-interests". In the first chapter she defines folly; "To qualify as folly for this inquiry, the policy adopted must meet three criteria: it must have been perceived as counter-productive in it's own time, not merely by hindsight... A feasible alternative course of action must have been available... The policy in question should be that of a group, not an individual ruler, and should persist beyond any one political lifetime". These criteria would have served primarily as self-imposed constraints on Tuchman to ensure the historical validity of her work. Unfortunately, Tuchman has no problems bending her own rules in order to identify herself with her readers and their paychecks. I gave it 2 stars because of the detail that Tuchman goes to to get her point across and because she is obviously a talented literary writer, but her motivation to hammer every event that she has listed as catastrophic folly into the mind of the reader often leads her to rash conclusions (such as an awkard analogy to the American Civil war on p. 323) and a disregard for anything that might change the readers' opinions from her focus: folly. Therefore the book is closeminded and biased, but in a decievingly 'open-minded' manner.
Rating:
Summary: Erudite, great prose and convincing.
Review: In the "March of Folly", historian Barbara Tuchman surveys four episodes in history - disparate in culture, chronlogy and geography but otherwise united in folly by the ruling leadership. Tuchman defines folly as the pursuit policy contraryr to self-interest. Self-interest is not to be confused with selfihsness, can be understood as the course that gives those who follow it the greatest benefit, whether the benefit is perceived as such. The Trojans fail to heed the warning of Greeks bearing gifts; The renaissance papacy provokes a protest; the British lose America and America loses Vietnam. In each of Tuchman's episodes, man's leadership not only trails his advances in science and the arts, but is actually inverse in relation. Tuchman's prose is always crisp and inviting and her analysis rarely lacks any power. Unfortunately, her thesis is not flawless - folly is meant to represent self-inflicted harm by government policy. This is meant to be uncomplicated by moral decisions which, given the actors involved, is not to be expected. Governments are expected to act in ways that benefit themselves. Nevertheless, self-interest is not selfishness, which, when coupled with greed or blind ambition, does more harm than benefit. (Often, a government's self-interest is to act morally, not based on any innate good, but merely because this legitmizes its rule over the people who prefer to see themselves on a moral high-ground.) The problem lies in Tuchman's equating any lack of good government with active self-harming policy, even the two shouldn't share an equal footing. Active, if ill-informed policy-making mires America in Vietnam, while the Trojans all but knock down their walls to make way for that Greek horse. On the flip side, British policy in the colonies seems clumsy, indicating that those for or against the colonies were incapable of formulating a cogent policy - the bane of a purely parliamentary system. Most lamentable, but also the most absorbing, is the case of the renaissance popes. Being at once the product of the college of cardinals and also the architect of its new generation, the renassance popes can do no more than prolong a corrupted system that bestowed upon them the papal tiara. Of the six popes cited, three actively pursue policy - while the remaining can do no more than continually tax christendom (especially the disunited German states), pursue confused alliances, arrange for lavish parties and deplete papal reserves. Under Tuchman's definition, self-harming policy is too inclusive of leadership incapable of forming policy. The corruption that bred the renaissance papacy was clearly endemic to the church of that era - with greed and manipulation of religion hardly limited to the seat of St. Peter - so it's hard to fault the popes. Tuchman clearly understands when recounting the reproach given to the future Leo X, that, were the Cardinals better men, they'd elect better popes, and all men would be better for it. Unfortunately, as Tuchman notes, the Renaissance Cardinals could not be better men because they were chosen by the poor popes to begin with, while the Popes are stymied by the fact that they were chosen by an earlier generation of imperfect cardinals. How Rome broke this cycle, vindicating Tuchman by proving the papacy capable of doing so, gets too little shrift. In fact, the renaissance papacy, while corrupt, was also remarkably tolerant, and the reformation that it bred held dire consequences in terms of war and religious persecution of the Jews, every bit as painful as the machivellian schemeing of the pre-protestant papacy. It's all exasperating, heart-breaking and entertaining, but one wonders whether these episodes should have gotten their own book.
Rating:
Summary: Erudite, great prose and convincing.
Review: In the "March of Folly", historian Barbara Tuchman surveys four episodes in history - disparate in culture, chronlogy and geography but otherwise united in folly by the ruling leadership. Tuchman defines folly as the pursuit policy contraryr to self-interest. Self-interest is not to be confused with selfihsness, can be understood as the course that gives those who follow it the greatest benefit, whether the benefit is perceived as such. The Trojans fail to heed the warning of Greeks bearing gifts; The renaissance papacy provokes a protest; the British lose America and America loses Vietnam. In each of Tuchman's episodes, man's leadership not only trails his advances in science and the arts, but is actually inverse in relation. Tuchman's prose is always crisp and inviting and her analysis rarely lacks any power. Unfortunately, her thesis is not flawless - folly is meant to represent self-inflicted harm by government policy. This is meant to be uncomplicated by moral decisions which, given the actors involved, is not to be expected. Governments are expected to act in ways that benefit themselves. Nevertheless, self-interest is not selfishness, which, when coupled with greed or blind ambition, does more harm than benefit. (Often, a government's self-interest is to act morally, not based on any innate good, but merely because this legitmizes its rule over the people who prefer to see themselves on a moral high-ground.) The problem lies in Tuchman's equating any lack of good government with active self-harming policy, even the two shouldn't share an equal footing. Active, if ill-informed policy-making mires America in Vietnam, while the Trojans all but knock down their walls to make way for that Greek horse. On the flip side, British policy in the colonies seems clumsy, indicating that those for or against the colonies were incapable of formulating a cogent policy - the bane of a purely parliamentary system. Most lamentable, but also the most absorbing, is the case of the renaissance popes. Being at once the product of the college of cardinals and also the architect of its new generation, the renassance popes can do no more than prolong a corrupted system that bestowed upon them the papal tiara. Of the six popes cited, three actively pursue policy - while the remaining can do no more than continually tax christendom (especially the disunited German states), pursue confused alliances, arrange for lavish parties and deplete papal reserves. Under Tuchman's definition, self-harming policy is too inclusive of leadership incapable of forming policy. The corruption that bred the renaissance papacy was clearly endemic to the church of that era - with greed and manipulation of religion hardly limited to the seat of St. Peter - so it's hard to fault the popes. Tuchman clearly understands when recounting the reproach given to the future Leo X, that, were the Cardinals better men, they'd elect better popes, and all men would be better for it. Unfortunately, as Tuchman notes, the Renaissance Cardinals could not be better men because they were chosen by the poor popes to begin with, while the Popes are stymied by the fact that they were chosen by an earlier generation of imperfect cardinals. How Rome broke this cycle, vindicating Tuchman by proving the papacy capable of doing so, gets too little shrift. In fact, the renaissance papacy, while corrupt, was also remarkably tolerant, and the reformation that it bred held dire consequences in terms of war and religious persecution of the Jews, every bit as painful as the machivellian schemeing of the pre-protestant papacy. It's all exasperating, heart-breaking and entertaining, but one wonders whether these episodes should have gotten their own book.
Rating:
Summary: Tuchman unloads on the US policy in Vietnam
Review: In the same way that Pauline Kael used her movie reviews, Barbara Tuchman uses history as an outlet of moral yearning. Every book is a cry of pain and joy for the injustices and beauty of life. Tuchman chooses her subjects carefully to convey a message to her readers, usually a cautionary tale of the abuse of power. "The March of Folly" is her most direct message yet. In it, she describes the folly of government-defined as action against self-interest despite an overwhelming preponderance of evidence to act otherwise-and how it led to several notable disastrous events. Namely, the sack of Troy, the split of the Catholic See, the loss of the American colonies, and the policy of Vietnam. But let's face it. Tuchman wrote this book with the Vietnam chapter in mind. Each chapter simply lays the groundwork for the material on Vietnam. The chapter Trojan Horse provides us the groundwork, the mythic case of folly we are all familiar with, and the lasting image we carry as we consider Vietnam. The Renaissance popes provides us an example of a self-perpetuating and stale system we can remember when thinking of a moribund Congress mindlessly voting appropriations for a war no one wanted. Consequently that same chapter gives us the image of a pope throwing lavish parties for which he hired prostitutes to crawl about on all fours, completely naked, picking up scattered chestnuts with their mouths-which might remind some of our own nation's zeal in its misuse of third-world nations-El Salvador, Iran, Panama, and Vietnam spring to mind-in Cold War play. The chapter on the loss of the American colonies allows readers to take pride in their forefathers' proaction and righteousness in comparison to the slothful and ignorant course corrupt, money-bought English Parliament followed, before comparing U.S. government in the 1950s-60s to those same English aristocrats of the 1770s. This chapter later raises uncomfortable questions about the U.S. anti-nationalistic policy in Vietnam, which worked against self-determination and, consequently, democracy. But by the time she arrives in Vietnam, she has stored up too much information. Tuchman bombards us with so many facts, memos, and bad decisions that we get lost in a labyrinth. Her prose gets bogged down. We forget where we are in the war, every page sounds the same, and it ends up so overwhelming that it's ineffective. It's like she's waited years to write this chapter, and has done too much research and wants to cram it all in a few pages. In the end, I have to agree with other reviewers who say it's not her best work. It is a work of passion. And as such, it's admirable for its passion, because it all rings true. PS - Ignore all that conservative/liberal claptrap. Both sides of the political coin had their hands bloodied in Vietnam. And if you can't learn from your mistakes, you're bound to repeat them.
Rating:
Summary: Timely read in light of America's new colonial pursuits
Review: It has been said that history doesn't repeat itself but it does rhyme. This is the theme of this book: a survey of folly throughout history. Tuchman provides historical analysis that reads flawlessly and is nonpartisan. Her command of history is striking. Her three main examples from history are the British Lose America, The Rennaisance Popes Provoke the Protestant Reformation and America in Vietnam. Each section is well written and historically complete. She provides background in each section that helps to understand how governments and individual personalities contribute to the pursuit of folly. I found the book quite informative and her arguments convincing. The sections on British lose America and American in Vietnam provide spectacular insight into America's current policy in the Middle East. The only downside to the book is that she concentrates on just her main examples. The scope of her analysis is not wide and leaves out countless other examples of folly in hisotry.
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