Tuchman, << TUHK muhn, >> Barbara Wertheim (1912-1989), was an American historian who won two Pulitzer Prizes for general nonfiction. She received the first in 1963 for The Guns of August (1962), which deals with the early phase of World War I (1914-1918). She won the second in 1972 for Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-1945 (1971), which centers on the career of the U.S. general Joseph W. Stilwell.
Tuchman was born on Jan. 30, 1912, in New York City. During 1934 and 1935, she worked as a research assistant for the Institute of Pacific Relations. She then became a reporter for The Nation magazine and covered the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Her first book, The Lost British Policy: Britain and Spain Since 1700, was published in 1938. Her other historical works include Bible and Sword: England and Palestine from the Bronze Age to Balfour (1956), The Zimmermann Telegram (1958), The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914 (1966), Notes from China (1972), A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century (1978), Practicing History: Selected Essays (1981), and The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam (1984). She died on Feb. 6, 1989.
