This 8-week course is based on Barbara Tuchman's "The Proud Tower, A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914".  We will take a close look at the fateful quarter century leading up to WW1, an age of the most accelerated rate of change to that point in history.  We will look at the British aristocracy, the Anarchists, the Dreyfus Affair, the two Hague Peace Conferences and the tragedy of Socialism, epitomized by the assassination of Jean Jaures in France.