Barbara W. Tuchman | |
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 Tuchman in 1971 | |
| Born | Barbara Wertheim (1912-01-30)January 30, 1912 New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Died | February 6, 1989(1989-02-06) (aged 77)[1] Greenwich, Connecticut, U.S.[1] |
| Occupation |
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| Alma mater | Radcliffe College (BA) |
| Period | 1938–1988 (writer) |
| Genre | History |
| Subject | Middle Ages,Renaissance,American Revolution,Edwardian era,World War I |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 3 (includingJessica Mathews) |
| Parents | Maurice Wertheim |
| Relatives |
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%2c_Barbara_Tuchman_(Center)%2c_and_John_Eisenhower_at_the_Conference_on_Research_and_World_War_II_and_the_National_Archives%2c_June_14-15%2c_1971.jpg)
Barbara Wertheim Tuchman (/ˈtʌkmən/; January 30, 1912 – February 6, 1989) was an American historian, journalist and author. She won thePulitzer Prize twice, forThe Guns of August (1962), a best-selling history of the prelude to and the first month ofWorld War I, andStilwell and the American Experience in China (1971), a biography of GeneralJoseph Stilwell.[2]
Tuchman focused on writingpopular history.
Barbara Wertheim was born January 30, 1912, the daughter of the bankerMaurice Wertheim and his first wife Alma Morgenthau. Her father was an individual of wealth and prestige, the owner ofThe Nation magazine, president of theAmerican Jewish Committee, prominent art collector, and a founder of theTheatre Guild.[3] Her mother was the daughter ofHenry Morgenthau,Woodrow Wilson's ambassador to theOttoman Empire.[3]
While she did not explicitly mention it in her 1962 bookThe Guns of August, Tuchman was present for one of the pivotal events of the book:the pursuit of the German battle cruiserGoeben and light cruiserBreslau. In her account of the pursuit she wrote, "That morning [August 10, 1914] there arrived inConstantinople the small Italian passenger steamer which had witnessed theGloucester's action againstGoeben andBreslau. Among its passengers were the daughter, son-in-law and three grandchildren of the American ambassador Mr. Henry Morgenthau."[4] She was a grandchild of Henry Morgenthau; she is referring to herself. This is confirmed in her later bookPracticing History,[5] in which she tells the story of her father,Maurice Wertheim, traveling from Constantinople toJerusalem on August 29, 1914, to deliver funds to the Jewish community there. Thus, at two, Tuchman was present during the pursuit ofGoeben andBreslau, which she documented 48 years later.[citation needed]
Wertheim was influenced at an early age by the books ofLucy Fitch Perkins andG. A. Henty, as well as the historical novels ofAlexandre Dumas.[3] She attended theWalden School on Manhattan's Upper West Side.[6] She received a Bachelor of Arts degree fromRadcliffe College in 1933, having studied history and literature.[3]
Following graduation, Wertheim worked as a volunteer research assistant at theInstitute of Pacific Relations in New York, spending a year inTokyo in 1934–35, including a month in China, then returning to the United States via theTrans-Siberian Railway to Moscow and on to Paris.[3] She also contributed toThe Nation as a correspondent until her father's sale of the publication in 1937, traveling toValencia andMadrid to cover theSpanish Civil War.[1]
In 1940, Wertheim married Lester R. Tuchman (1904–1997), aninternist, medical researcher and professor ofclinical medicine atMount Sinai School of Medicine in Manhattan. They had three daughters, includingJessica Mathews, who became president of theCarnegie Endowment for International Peace.[7]
During the years ofWorld War II, Tuchman worked in theOffice of War Information.[3] Following the war, Tuchman spent the next decade working to raise the children while doing basic research for what would ultimately become the 1956 bookBible and Sword: England and Palestine from the Bronze Age to Balfour.[3]
With the publication ofBible and Sword in 1956, Tuchman dedicated herself to historical research and writing, turning out a new book approximately every four years.[3] Rather than feeling hampered by the lack of an advanced degree in history, Tuchman argued that freedom from the rigors and expectations of academia was actually liberating. She said that the norms of academic writing would have "stifled any writing capacity."[3]
Tuchman favored a literary approach to the writing of history, providing eloquent explanatory narratives rather than concentration upon discovery and publication of fresh archival sources. In the words of one biographer, Tuchman was "not a historian's historian; she was a layperson's historian who made the past interesting to millions of readers".[8]
In 1971, Tuchman received theSt. Louis Literary Award from theSaint Louis University Library Associates.[9][10]
In 1978, Tuchman was elected a Fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences.[11] She became the first female president of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Letters in 1979.[12] She won a U.S.National Book Awardin History[13] for the first paperback edition ofA Distant Mirror in 1980.[14] Also in 1980 Tuchman gave theNational Endowment for the Humanities' (NEH)Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in thehumanities. Tuchman's lecture was titled "Mankind's Better Moments".[15]
Tuchman was a trustee of Radcliffe College and a lecturer atHarvard University, theUniversity of California, and theNaval War College. Although she never received a graduate degree in history, Tuchman was the recipient of a number of honorary degrees from leading American universities, includingYale University, Harvard University,New York University,Columbia University,Boston University, andSmith College, among others.[3]
Tuchman died in 1989 inGreenwich, Connecticut, following a stroke, exactly one week after her 77th birthday.[3]
A tower ofCurrier House, a residential division first of Radcliffe College and now of Harvard College, was named in Tuchman's honor.[16]
In the introduction to her 1978 bookA Distant Mirror, Tuchman playfully identified a historical phenomenon which she termed "Tuchman's Law", to wit:
Disaster is rarely as pervasive as it seems from recorded accounts. The fact of being on the record makes it appear continuous and ubiquitous whereas it is more likely to have been sporadic both in time and place. Besides, persistence of the normal is usually greater than the effect of the disturbance, as we know from our own times. After absorbing the news of today, one expects to face a world consisting entirely of strikes, crimes, power failures, broken water mains, stalled trains, school shutdowns, muggers, drug addicts, neo-Nazis, and rapists. The fact is that one can come home in the evening—on a lucky day—without having encountered more than one or two of these phenomena. This has led me to formulate Tuchman's Law, as follows: "The fact of being reported multiplies the apparent extent of any deplorable development by five- to tenfold" (or any figure the reader would care to supply).[17]
Tuchman's Law has been defined as a psychological principle of "perceptual readiness" or "subjective probability" and one that is a useful guide in how to align with our subjective misunderstanding of the world's dangers fueled by television and other media where random but rare acts of violence seem more prevalent than the much higher rates of violence and harm that stem, for example, from white collar crime and corporate decisions.[18]
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