A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century - Softcover

Tuchman, Barbara W.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0345349571 ISBN 13: 9780345349576

Publisher: Ballantine Books Inc., 2014

Synopsis

Barbara W. Tuchman—the acclaimed author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning classic The Guns of August—once again marshals her gift for character, history, and sparkling prose to compose an astonishing portrait of medieval Europe.
 
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

About this title

Review:

"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

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: Ballantine Books Inc.
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0345349571
• ISBN 13: 9780345349576
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 784