Barbara Wertheim Tuchman

 The Calamitous 14th Century

A Distant Mirror

Matthew Royal

Superb research and story-telling. I've always detested history of the medieval schism, but Tuchman makes it interesting, and the rest of the era fascinating.

Nadine 

I must admit I got about 3/4 through this 14+ hour tome and have returned it early. I picked it up for the references to the plague and it was interesting and a great way to bring 14th century life to life as it were. But I fatigued of the endless battles and gore and male power lust . By this point it’s become a blur and I’m moving on.

Simon Elliott Stegall

People have always been crazy, and the world has always been ending.

Jeni Enjaian

I really wish that we had the options to give half stars. If that were the case, I would give this book a 3.5 star rating. I really did like the book but not quite enough to give it four stars.
I found the subject fascinating but too much. Tuchman bit off, in my opinion, just a bit more than she could chew. At the beginning of the book she stated her basic outline for the book, as a good historian should. Since the study of a particular century is far too much for any one book, Tuchman chose to limit the book to the events occurring within the lifetime of one particular character. (She did indulge in a bit of discussion of the years just beyond either end but that's understandable.) She also described in great detail her search for a character that was prominent enough to have a decent amount of data extant but not an especially prominent character such as a king or queen. I admire her effort but think that her noble goals were not quite reached. Her character (I have no idea how to spell the French since I just listened to the audiobook rather than read it in print) was, after all, married to the King of England's daughter. In my book that makes him pretty prominent.
The biggest thing that bothered me, is that Tuchman often strayed far outside the guidelines that she set for herself at the beginning of the book. (Specifically here I'm referring to her self-imposed limitation of the book's scope to the life of one particular character.) She often spent several chapters discussing events occurring concurrently but not directly or even indirectly related to the "main character."
That being said, Tuchman does a masterful job corralling the many diverse details surrounding the 1300s. She inspired a desire within me to learn even more about this era which in my book is an extremely positive sign.
I highly recommend this book despite my lackluster rating. Only Tuchman's failure to live up completely to the goals she set at the beginning of the book lost her that star. :)

Barbara W. Tuchman

A “marvelous history”* of medieval Europe, from the bubonic plague and the Papal Schism to the Hundred Years’ War, by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Guns of August *Lawrence Wright, author of The End of October, in The Wall Street Journal The fourteenth century reflects two contradictory images: on the one hand, a glittering age of crusades, cathedrals, and chivalry; on the other, a world plunged into chaos and spiritual agony. In this revelatory work, Barbara W. Tuchman examines not only the great rhythms of history but the grain and texture of domestic life: what childhood was like; what marriage meant; how money, taxes, and war dominated the lives of serf, noble, and clergy alike. Granting her subjects their loyalties, treacheries, and guilty passions, Tuchman re-creates the lives of proud cardinals, university scholars, grocers and clerks, saints and mystics, lawyers and mercenaries, and, dominating all, the knight—in all his valor and “furious follies,” a “terrible worm in an iron cocoon.” Praise for A Distant Mirror “Beautifully written, careful and thorough in its scholarship . . . What Ms. Tuchman does superbly is to tell how it was. . . . No one has ever done this better.”—The New York Review of Books “A beautiful, extraordinary book . . . Tuchman at the top of her powers . . . She has done nothing finer.”—The Wall Street Journal “Wise, witty, and wonderful . . . a great book, in a great historical tradition.”—Commentary NOTE: This edition does not include color images.

A Distant Mirror The Calamitous 14th Century

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