A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

by Barbara W. Tuchman

A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

book data

597 ratings, 4.21 average rating, 94 reviews (more data...)

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published

August 1978 (first published 1979) by Alfred A. Knopf

binding

Hardcover, 677 pages

isbn

0394400267 (isbn13: 9780394400266)

description

In this sweeping historical narrative, Barbara Tuchman writes of the cataclysmic 14th century, when the energies of medieval Europe were devoted to f...more

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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 926)

All ratings | 5 stars (241) | 4 stars (239) | 3 stars (96) | 2 stars (10) | 1 star (1) | avg 4.21

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Lisa

Lisa rated it:

(review of isbn 0345349571)

02/11/08

bookshelves: nonfiction

This book is the reason I majored in history.

I know it sounds...odd...but until I read this book, I felt like I was weird because I liked history--hard core, down and dirty, obscure and addictive, history.

Whenever I researched women and history, their contributions were always sidelined, and I don't just mean the way most text books write about women rulers as curiousities or give a quick nod to Molly Pitcher and the like. I also mean women historians. So many of them were researching ...more

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Inder

Inder rated it:

(review of isbn 0345349571)

11/19/07

bookshelves: disease, history, science

Read in January, 1994

My dad is a Barbara Tuchman fan, so I grew up around this book. As a small child, I used to ponder with interest the scary cover art, which shows the arrival of the Forth Horseman of the Apocalypse ("and his name was death" for you Johnny Cash fans). I finally read the book when I was in high school, and I have reread it several times since. It is a perfect example of good history writing - absolutely engaging and human.

Among other things, this book, along with "Rats, Lice &a...more

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2 comments

Janis

Janis rated it:

(review of isbn 0345349571)

12/21/07

Read in December, 2007

recommends it for: serious readers of history

Dense with detail, A Distant Mirror offers a shocking picture of life in 14th-century Europe including endless warfare, crusades, burdensome taxing of the lower classes, public punishment as a form of entertainment, highway robbers, and recurring plague. Tuchman weaves the history loosely around the life of a French nobleman but her view is broad and her knowledge of the era seemingly boundless. It's no reflection on Tuchman (I thought her scholarly achievement was amazing) but I am relieved t...more

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Richard

Richard rated it:

(review of isbn 0345349571)

01/30/08

bookshelves: currently-reading

Read in January, 2008

Got turned on to the book by my son, who's been listening to a recorded version. Excellent look at life and times of European 14th century. Though it focuses on the later century (from after the plague years of 1348-50) through the life of Enguerrand de Coucy (1340-1397), the last of a family going back several centuries, there's lots of background and secondary information covered.

The "mirror" of the title is intended to reference how the author feels that the 14th century somehow h...more

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josie

josie rated it:

(review of isbn )

04/04/08

Read in March, 2008

A must for anyone interested in the Middle Ages, and, in particular, chivalry. While it is largely focused on France in the second half of the 14th Century, and, admittedly, not quite on same level as "The Proud Tower", it is a very good survey of the complex society which laid the foundation for so much of what Western Civilization is today.
A particularly delightful element of the book is the horror and absurdity that chivalry was in practice.
For anyone not specifically intereste...more

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Charles

Charles rated it:

(review of isbn )

03/29/08

Read in January, 2007

recommended to Charles by: While reading a book of a priest who lived in 13 Cen. Pyrenees M
recommends it for: Someone interested in history and Europe

r If you want to get a good understanding of 14 Century Europe this is a book for you. It gets a little long at times but if you stick with it you'll get a different perspective of the crusades, the church, the killing and disease (Black Death) that swept the lands of Europe during this time. Tuchman did her homework and wrote as it was. I was really impressed how she described how Coucy and others were imprisoned during the crusades. However, a lot of these people were just pigs. Shocking ...more

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James

James rated it:

(review of isbn 0345349571)

02/28/08

bookshelves: character-studies, culture-and-politics, economics, history

Read in January, 1995

recommends it for: Anyone

This book gets more relevant as time goes on - as Tuchman's examination shows, the 14th century really was a mirror for our own times in many ways. Disease is becoming a greater factor in geopolitics, with malaria and HIV changing history, and threatens to devastate world civilization if avian flu or another pandemic gets out of control; in the post-Cold-War era, more and more of the world is lapsing into feudalized failed-state status. I wish Tuchman was still with us - it would be fascinatin...more

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Jan

Jan rated it:

(review of isbn 0345349571)

09/03/08

Read in March, 2002

This is one of the books that has colored my understanding of history and the whole world ever since I've read it. Nobody is better than Tuchman at weaving together stories of real people with demographics, economics, and the political and religious landscape of the time.

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Aaron

Aaron rated it:

(review of isbn 0345349571)

10/25/08

Read in October, 2008

recommends it for: medieval history buffs

I'm not quite sure how I came to read this strange and unwieldy book. It just kept popping up in my sights. For a while now, I've had a boyish fascination with the Middle Ages, intensified by a couple of years spent studying Old English in grad school, and nursed along since then with occasional books about the Black Death, the Crusades, castle building, and whatever else seemed interesting to me. Most of what I've read has been deeply thought-provoking, on the one hand, if somewhat tiresome to ...more I'm not quite sure how I came to read this strange and unwieldy book. It just kept popping up in my sights. For a while now, I've had a boyish fascination with the Middle Ages, intensified by a couple of years spent studying Old English in grad school, and nursed along since then with occasional books about the Black Death, the Crusades, castle building, and whatever else seemed interesting to me. Most of what I've read has been deeply thought-provoking, on the one hand, if somewhat tiresome to read, on the other. Norman Cantor, at his best, is an exception, but even he grows drowsily academic. There are few great writers among medievalists, I've discovered. Steven Runciman, the British historian of the Crusades, is one. But Barbara Tuchman, the author of this book, is in a league entirely of her own.

Maybe that's because she wasn't a traditional medievalist. Tuchman was an amateur historian, unaffiliated with any academic institution. She was a writer, first and foremost, who produced gigantic, painstakingly crafted books on a wide variety of subjects. Her history of the events leading up to World War I, "The Guns of August," earned her the first of two Pulitzer Prizes. (Just added to my "to read" list.) From the moment I started in on this hefty 600-pager, I was enthralled by the voice of the consummate stylist guiding me along. Perhaps that's a naive thing to say about a historical account, and perhaps it's the sort of thing that leads to a flawed understanding of historical events. Eloquence isn't everything, and plenty of important books have been the work of rough hands. But it's not so much Tuchman's command of language that draws you in as her infectious enchantment with her subject: the period of Western European history beginning with the Black Death of 1348 and ending with the fall of the Byzantine Empire in the early 1400s, all as seen through the life of a single French nobleman. "People of the Middle Ages existed under mental, moral, and physical circumstances so different from our own as to constitute almost a foreign civilization," Tuchman writes. And indeed the reflection of humanity you see in this "distant mirror" is almost unrecognizable, but all the more fascinating for that.

Today, as I finished off the last hundred pages, I found myself reading long passages aloud, the way you do when you read Gabriel Garcia Marquez for the first time, or some other uncannily good novelist. Unlike some authors of ambitiously long and complicated books, Tuchman doesn't peter out near the end and leave the reader feeling cheated. Her culminating chapters are some of her best, and it doesn't even matter that the people and events she's describing are so old and of so little relevance to your daily life that you will probably never hear them mentioned again, not even on Jeopardy. What matters is that she makes them all alive again, more alive than they've been for 600 years....less

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Sandra D

Sandra D rated it:

01/31/08

bookshelves: western-europe

Read in January, 2008

This was a long, slow read, but still a feast for history nerds (like me), covering many aspects of life in Europe in the 1300s -- the social strata, the status of women, oppression, insurrections and uprisings, religious schisms, economics, politics, etc.

Mostly, though, it was about war: funding for war, preparations for war, waging of war and ramifications of war, which is hardly surprising since it was the time of the Hundred Years' War but, still, I was pretty war-weary by the end of t...more

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John

John rated it:

(review of isbn 0345349571)

04/19/08

Read in February, 2008

This was a very interesting book, even though it got to be a tough read in the middle. Basically it opens your eyes about life back then, how the nobility (upper class) basically preyed upon the lower classes. And also how almost completely inept the French nobility were during the Hundred Years War. When the nobility weren't off battling the enemy (England mostly), they were either rampaging thru their own countryside (they had nothing else to do), or taxing the hell out of their subjects an...more

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Alex

Alex rated it:

04/07/07

bookshelves: always-reading

This is a gory book about a period which is hidden from most basic academic courses. Most children in school will never learn of the period or even hear about what happened during it. This is listed as non-fiction, but sometimes I feel that the author over exaggerated on aspects of it. Some pieces feel like they were embellished to make the period seem more gritty. While of course it wasn't the perfect time, the appearance given in this book is overwhelmingly bad.

It is in the end thoug...more

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Laurie

Laurie rated it:

(review of isbn 0345349571)

11/25/08

I read this many years ago but remember it was easy history to read. I was struck by how similar times were then to now in the way leaders run things and the little people have little control over their lives.

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Daragh

Daragh rated it:

(review of isbn 0345349571)

05/02/08

recommends it for: anyone who wants to understand who we are

I first started this book when I was a student at University College Dublin, Ireland in 1985. I had no idea what the medieval world was like having never learned anything about it in secondary school. I was fascinated with the chapter on the Church and the Black Death. Also the Poll Tax Revolt was very interesting.

I am now reading it again in downloadable audiobook format and I'm enjoying it very much. This is very readable history. It makes my hour long commute the best part of my day!

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Alvin

Alvin rated it:

(review of isbn 0345349571)

08/10/07

Read in June, 1980

recommends it for: everyone

This is from my favorite historical writer. Deals with 14th century europe at the time of schism, murder, religious collapse and elitism,ultra disparity of wealth distribution, and madness....a book that the current pool of ruling princes should have read before beginning the current crusade.They would have enjoyed looking at the pictures in the center of the book. I rebound my copy into a solid bound-a keeper and comfort book for me.

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Rod

Rod rated it:

(review of isbn 0345349571)

02/07/08

Read in February, 2008

recommends it for: history buffs

600 pages of well-written, sometimes chatty detail about an amazing century of plague, war, bad religion and bad government. What a mess. I paid special attention to the leaders of government and church, where many cautionary tales are to be found. Witnessing the rise of Wycliffe and Hus, who appear as side-notes in Tuchman's preoccupation with the disintegration of medieval ideas and nobility, was an inspiration.

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Kristy

Kristy rated it:

(review of isbn 0345349571)

02/12/08

Not just for history geeks! Tuchman is an amazing historian/writer & I'll always have my AP European History teacher, Ms Pojer, to thank for introducing me to her.
Ive always loved Renaissance history, but this book gave me such an understanding of the the madness of the late Medieval era that facilitated the Renaissance.

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Adam

Adam rated it:

(review of isbn 0345349571)

05/08/07

Read in March, 2007

It took me four full months to finish this thing because I relished every detail. The details of everyday life that Tuchman includes create a spell that really drew me in. It was amazing to learn how different these people's lives were from mine, yet how many of the same struggles they faced. Like getting the plague--I HATE that!

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Simone

Simone rated it:

(review of isbn 0345349571)

08/30/07

Another great book from Barbara Tuchman, comparing the similarities between the 14th and 20th centuries. Truly fascinating. The fun fact that sticks in my head was that a 14th century army, moving at top speed, could only cover 9 miles in a day. On bad days, it was more like one mile. No wonder wars lasted so long...

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Cherie

Cherie rated it:

(review of isbn 0345349571)

10/10/08

I have seriously read this book 10 times in the last 20 years. The more often I read it, the more I agree with her premise that we are we living in the 14th century, but with computers. The first time I read it, no one was talking about AIDS as the plague of our time. Great history by an engaging author.

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