A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century - Softcover

Tuchman, Barbara

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0241972973 ISBN 13: 9780241972977

Publisher: Penguin, 2017

Synopsis

The fourteenth century was a time of fabled crusades and chivalry, glittering cathedrals and grand castles. It was also a time of ferocity and spiritual agony, a world of chaos and the plague.

Here, Barbara Tuchman masterfully reveals the two contradictory images of the age, examining the great rhythms of history and the grain and texture of domestic life as it was lived: 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 recreates the lives of proud cardinals, university scholars, grocers and clerks, saints and mystics, lawyers and mercenaries, and, above all, knights. The result is an astonishing reflection of medieval Europe, a historical tour de force.

About this title

Review:

A beautiful, extraordinary book . . . Tuchman at the top of her powers . . . She has done nothing finer (Wall Street Journal)

Wise, witty, and wonderful . . . a great book, in a great historical tradition (Commentary)

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 (New York Review of Books)

From the Back Cover:

'Beautifully written, careful and thorough in its scholarship . . . No one has ever done this better' New York Review of Books

It has been said that 'no epoch was more naturally mad'. On the one hand the fourteenth century was a time of fabled crusades and chivalry, of glittering cathedrals and princely splendour; on the other, it was an age of social chaos and spiritual agony, pocked by plague.

Here, Pulitzer-Prize winning historian Barbara Tuchman captures both the great rhythms of history and the grain and texture of daily life - what childhood and marriage were like; how money, taxes and war dominated the lives of serf, noble and clergy alike; how death came for all, even the most skilful of knights.

Granting her subjects their beauties, treacheries and guilty passions, Tuchman synthesizes the lives of proud cardinals, riotous students, feminists, innkeepers, saints and mercenaries over a vast canvas. The result is an astonishing reflection of medieval Europe, a historical tour de force and, without doubt, her finest achievement.

'A beautiful, extraordinary book' Wall Street Journal

'Wise, witty, and wonderful . . . a great book, in a great historical tradition' Commentary

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0241972973
• ISBN 13: 9780241972977
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 784