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Barbara Wertheim Tuchman (January 30, 1912 - February 6, 1989) was an American historian and author, and became best known for The Guns of August , a history of the prelude and first month of World War I. Tuchman was the daughter of the banker Maurice Wertheim and granddaughter of Henry Morgenthau Sr., Woodrow Wilson's Ambassador to Turkey. She received her BA from Radcliffe College in 1933. She married Lester R. Tuchman, a physician, in 1939; they had three daughters and divorced in 1963. From 1934 to 1935 she worked as a research assistant at the Institute of Pacific Relations in New York and Tokyo, and then began a career as a journalist before turning to books. Tuchman was the editorial assistant of The Nation and an American correspondent of New Statesman in London, with Far East News Desk and Office of War Information (1934-45). As an author, Tuchman focused on producing popular history. Her clear, dramatic storytelling covered topics as diverse as the 14th century and World War I, and sold millions of copies. Tuchman was a trustee of Radcliffe College and a lecturer at Harvard University, University of California, and the U.S. Naval War College. Tuchman was the author of books that aspired to be more popular than the established classics of the field. Inventing the Middle Ages by Norman Cantor, a history of medieval historians, describes her work in context.
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