Biography of Barbara Tuchman

Name: Barbara Tuchman
Birth Date: January 30, 1912
Death Date: February 6, 1989
Place of Birth: New York, New York, United States
Nationality: American
Gender: Female
Occupations: historian, journalist

Barbara Tuchman

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and journalist Barbara Tuchman (1912-1989) was best known for her works on 20th-century wars although she also wrote on 14th-century France.Barbara Tuchman was born in New York City on January 30, 1912, the daughter of Maurice and Alma (Morganthau) Wertheim. The Wertheim family was wealthy and had a tradition of interest in public affairs. Barbara's maternal grandfather was Henry Morganthau, Sr., a banker and American ambassador to Turkey during President Wilson's administration, and her uncle, Henry Morganthau, Jr., was Franklin Roosevelt's secretary of the treasury. Barbara's father was a banker and a publisher as well as having many outside interests, including founding the Theatre Guild and serving as president of the American Jewish Committee.Barbara attended private schools in New York and graduated from Radcliffe College in 1933. Her early interest in history is shown by her honors thesis, "The Moral Justification of the British Empire." Although one of her …showed first 150 words…

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…showed last 150 words…addition, Belgium inducted her into the Order of Leopold first class.Tuchman's writings are noted for attention to detail and colorful style. The author was most interested in the human element in history and, consequently, emphasized biographical data even in works devoted to the coming and waging of war. She practiced narrative history in the tradition of Ranke, whose motto--to tell history as it is--she took for her own. Associated Events Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939, World War I, 1914-1918, World War II, 1939-1945 Further Reading The biography of Barbara Tuchman appears in the standard contemporary reference works. Further details can be found in the New Yorker (October 6, 1962). She discussed certain personal aspects of her life in the introduction to Practicing History (1981), which also contains segments on her historical methods and philosophy. A nice tribute to some of her views appears in Dudley Barlow's Lessons of History, published in Education Digest (March, 1996).

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