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Start giftingThe March of Folly
From Troy to Vietnam
Narrator
Wanda McCaddon
This audiobook uses AI narration.
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Length
17 hours 53 minutes
Language
English
In The March of Folly, two-time Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Barbara Tuchman tackles the pervasive presence of folly in governments through the ages. Defining folly as the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests, despite the availability of feasible alternatives, Tuchman details four decisive turning points in history that illustrate the very heights of folly in government: the Trojan War, the breakup of the Holy See provoked by the Renaissance popes, the loss of the American colonies by Britain’s George III, and the United States’ persistent folly in Vietnam.
The March of Folly brings the people, places, and events of history magnificently alive for today’s reader.
Barbara W. Tuchman (1912–1989) was a self-trained historian and author who achieved prominence with The Zimmerman Telegram and international fame with The Guns of August, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1963. She received her BA degree from Radcliffe College in 1933 and worked as a research assistant at the Institute of Pacific Relations in New York and Tokyo from 1934 to 1935. She then began working as a journalist and contributed to publications including The Nation, for which she covered the Spanish Civil War as a foreign correspondent in 1937. Her other books, include The Proud Tower, A Distant Mirror, Practicing History, The March of Folly, The First Salute, and Stilwell and the American Experience in China: 1911-45, also awarded the Pulitzer Prize. In 1980 the National Endowment for the Humanities selected her to deliver the Jefferson Lecture, the US government’s highest honor for intellectual achievement in the humanities.
Wanda McCaddon (a.k.a. Nadia May or Donada Peters) has narrated well over six hundred titles for major audiobook publishers, has earned numerous Earphones Awards, and was named a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine.
Reviews
“Among contemporary historians Barbara Tuchman stands supreme.”
“Admirers of her earlier works will find Barbara Tuchman’s familiar virtues on display. She is lucid, painstaking, and highly intelligent. She is also highly expert.”
“In The March of Folly, Barbara Tuchman, as usual, breaks all the rules. She sails forth with bold moral purpose at a time when most other popular historians hug the shores of biography...There is more to Tuchman’s appeal than surperb storytelling. She also glories in unmasking deceit, cant, and pomposity.”
“Without missing a single consonant and narrating at a pace that complements the author’s abundant flow of information, Wanda McCaddon employs her award-winning talents to the fullest. McCaddon’s French and Italian make her sound like a native speaker of both. The satire of the Renaissance popes exemplifies the color both author and narrator bring to didactic narrative.”
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