Is Guns of August still worth reading?

by TheShovelOfKut

This book gets a fair bit of criticism but it’s also commonly recommended for learning about the start of WW1.

Is there any value to reading this book still, as someone who is interested in WW1 (have already read a few other books on the topic) but not necessarily interested in reading books just for the sake of learning how people understood topics in the past.

white_light-king

So this book is 58 years old, published in 1962. It's important culturally and in historiography. But any book that's 58 years old isn't going to be anything like the best book on the subject (unless it's very niche, and WWI is not) because there will be five decades of scholarship after it's published.

The sub has a book list entry for the ground covered by Tuchman's book and that's probably a better place to start.