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Barbara Tuchman

Barbara Tuchman 1912-1989

On a cold winter morning on January 30th in 1912 a baby girl was born to the proud parents of Maurice and Alma Wertheim. Her name was Barbara. She would someday come to be known as Barbara Tuchman, narrative historian and writer.
Barbara was born into a comfortable home in New York, New York. She had a middle class up bringing and both her mother and father came from distinguished families. They also were probably well off because of her fathers great success in business. Barbara's father Maurice was at some point President of the American Jewish Committee as well as a Philanthropist, a baker and a publisher. He published many magazines one of which was The Nation. Which he purchased as it was going bankrupt in 1935. Barbara's grandfather Henry Morgenthau Sr., Maurice's father, worked and served as an ambassador to Turkey, and her uncle Henry Morgenthau Jr., Maurice's brother, was Secretary of the Treasury for President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Barbara had two sister's Josephine and Anne, and their family had seven servants.
Barbara first experienced World War I when she was only two years old, she was of course too young to remember. While journeying with her parents on a ship to Constantinople to visit her grandfather, two German water vessels and a British warship exchanged shots. Barbara had a good upbringing. All through out her childhood she loved reading and did a lot of it. She could spend hours on end reading her favorite books over and over again. This love for reading started a spark in her heart that would one day lead to her love for not only writing history but for history itself.

She attended The Walden School, which was established in 1914 and is still today a functioning school. In fact a well known celebrity Matthew Broderick also attended and graduated from there. Barbara graduated in 1930 when she was 18. She then went on to attend college at and received her BA at Radcliffe College. She didn't actually...