Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Barbara W. Tuchman, author of the World War I masterpiece The Guns of August, grapples with her boldest subject: the pervasive presence, through the ages, of failure, mismanagement, and delusion in government. Drawing on a comprehensive array of examples, from Montezuma’s senseless surrender of his empire in 1520 to Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, Barbara W. Tuchman defines folly as the pursuit by government of policies contrary to their own interests, despite the availability of feasible alternatives. In brilliant detail, Tuchman illuminates four decisive turning points in history that illustrate the very heights of folly: 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’ own persistent mistakes in Vietnam. Throughout The March of Folly, Tuchman’s incomparable talent for animating the people, places, and events of history is on spectacular display.

Stilwell & the American Experience in China, 1911-45 was written by Barbara Wertheim Tuchman & published in '71 by Macmillan Publishers. It won the '72 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. The book was republished in 2001 by Grove Press. It was also published under the title Sand Against the Wind: Stilwell & the American Experience in China, 1911-45 by Macmillan Publishers in 1970. Using the life of Joseph Stilwell, military attache to China in 1935-39 & commander of U.S. forces & allied chief of staff to Chiang Kai-shek in '42-44, this book explores the history of China from the Revolution of 1911 to the turmoil of WWII, when its right-wing Nationalist government faced attack from both Japanese invaders & Communist insurgents.