A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

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

The 14th century gives us back two contradictory images: a glittering time of crusades and castles, cathedrals and chivalry, and a dark time of ferocity and spiritual agony, a world plunged into a chaos of war, fear and the Plague. Barbara Tuchman anatomizes the century, revealing both the great rhythms of history and the grain and texture of domestic life as it was lived.
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From: Amazon
Posted: Jul-17-2009

Needed a Good Editor

While the subject matter is interesting, the author buries it in unimportant details. I read a few other reviews and the terms, bore, slog and fight through are appropriate in reference to reading this tome. A good editor would have culled this book down significantly to let a great story shine.

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From: Amazon
Posted: Jul-01-2009

scholarly treatise

A distant mirror is a scholarly treatise on the politics, government, health conditions and social system of the 14th century. Too detailed for the casual reader, it's a useful study of the history of the period.

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From: Amazon
Posted: Sep-13-2008

Symphony of historiography

'A Distant Mirror' has been my most satisfying read in years. Ms Tuchman lays out the events of the 14th century in rich but comprehensible detail. She paints a truly convincing picture of the age and one comes away with a remarkable understanding of the flawed mediaeval age. The writing is...

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From: Amazon
Posted: Aug-30-2008

A Distant Mirror

Barbra Tuchman's A Distant Mirror is an excellent narrative history of the period, highly readable, and thoroughly researched. Cast as an extended biography of a singular figure whose life almost exactly bracketed a tumultous period in the history of Europe, the book examines the social,...

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From: Amazon
Posted: Aug-30-2008

Black Plague and other medieval occurances -- Great!

Barbara Tuchman's history of medieval times is fascinating and really thorough -- what it must have been really like. Better from afar -- it would seem. Great book by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author.

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From: Amazon
Posted: Aug-05-2008

A good, but not great, book

Tuchman builds a wonderful mental picture of the 14th century, and what it must have been like to live back then. She follows the 14th century through the life of a French nobleman (but not a king). This led to a book that isn't a great story - she purposely picks someone who has some...

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From: Amazon
Posted: Jul-14-2008

Thorough, Detailed, Riveting

Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror is a study of European Medieval history centered on the Black Death (1348-50) and encompassing the period between 1300 and approximately 1450. Written from the narrative perspective, she follows the life of one Enguerrand de Coucy VII (1340-97), a member of the...

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From: Amazon
Posted: Feb-21-2008

Gripping retelling of a bygone, horrific age

Barbara Tuchman may have labored under the title, "amateur historian," but her work "A Distant Mirror" is a must-read classic for ivory tower academics as well as casual fans of the Middle Ages alike. She may not have written for the professors of the world, but her insight and writing ability...

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From: Amazon
Posted: Jan-24-2008

good overview of a nauseating age

I was drawn to this book primarily because Tuchman has unerringly been able to make obscure periods of history come alive with meaning and interest. I was not overwhelmingly interested in the middle ages but I felt that if anyone could make the era interesting and entertaining it would be her....

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From: Amazon
Posted: Nov-27-2007

absolutely first-rate reconstruction of our medieval soul

This is a wonderfully readable and engrossing book on the period that marked us more deeply - as the source of so many of our touchstone images and ideas - than just about any other. We, or at least I, imagine dungeons, cold, early death, blind faith, and the knightly order of repression and the...

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