The Proud Tower - Exploring Social Forces at Work Prior to WWI

Paul Liska is a longtime Chicago senior executive who has been instrumental in numerous corporate transformation and restructuring efforts. An avid reader of historical nonfiction, Paul Liska enjoys works such as Barbara Tuchman’s The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War 1890-1914.

Extensively researched, Tuchman’s classic work is highly observational and does not proceed linearly. Rather, it provides a series of snapshots spanning nations and social and political movements. These together present a composite picture of the forces that led to World War I.

One focus is on Great Britain, which upheld citizens’ rights and freedoms, while nevertheless fostering an extreme wealth and standard of living gap between the upper classes and those who labored beneath them. Early in the 20th century, cogs were already in place for a politics spearheaded by labor movements that would define the UK after the war.

Other in-depth analysis centers on the anti-authoritarian anarchists, who promoted the revolutionary idea of a stateless society. Despite not accomplishing any of their aims, they shook the establishment to its core through high-profile assassinations that included Tsar Alexander II of Russia, U.S. president William McKinley, and King Umberto of Italy. While the tinderbox assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand was by a nationalist, the destabilizing effect the anarchists had may have led countries into conflict that culminated in the Great War.