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Feb 11, 2008

Lisa rated it:

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 w More...

0 comments like (27 people liked it)

Nov 20, 2010

Susan rated it:

I read a little more than half of this a couple of years ago and stopped. This time I read it all, for the discussion of my local book group. I really liked it--I've never NOT liked a Tuchman book. I admire the way she's able to follow one historical figure and still manage to tell the story of a whole age, especially one person, in this case Enguerrand de Coucy about whom so little is known other than what he did. There exist references to him in contemporary works but never more than a figure More...

6 comments like (7 people liked it)

Dec 23, 2009

Inder rated it:

Just got a nice hardbound copy of this for Christmas, so I'm set to read it again ...

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 - More...

2 comments like (5 people liked it)

Oct 25, 2008

Aaron rated it:

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...

4 comments like (14 people liked it)

Dec 21, 2007

Janis rated it:

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...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Aug 24, 2011

James rated it:

I still remember reading this book when it first was published. It is another readable and accessible history by that great non-academic historian Barbara Tuchman. I first encountered her work when I read The Proud Tower so my expectations were high. That they were exceeded suggests that this is a work to which I should return as I seldom do for non-fiction. In this ambitious book she explores the tragedy, political intrigue and occasional dark comedy that surround the infestation of the Bla More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 19, 2011

Robin rated it:

I had almost forgotten about this book. It was the late 70s when it sat on my book shelf. Just looking at the cover makes me feel young again. Sorry, I digress. I saw it on someone's Goodreads reviews. This was the first history book I voluntarily read (not required reading for a class) and I loved it and fell in love with History. Okay, I was already in love with history but this book reaffirmed that love. Seeing it here was like seeing an old friend.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 30, 2008

Richard rated it:

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 s More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 19, 2010

josie rated it:

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 i More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 19, 2010

Charles rated it:

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...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 28, 2008

James rated it:

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...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 23, 2011

Gladys rated it:

I enjoyed A Distant Mirror, particularly the way its wealth of detail and narrative prose immersed me in 14th Century life. As the title implies, reading about a time that is both very different and very similar to the present inspires some interesting reflections on human nature. While the western world certainly has come a long way, it seems that there are some aspects of human behavior (greed, politicking, impulsiveness, violence) that will always be with us at a macro and a micro level. Tuch More...

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Jan 01, 2012

Frederick rated it:

One of my favorite books ever. This book describes the 14th century in Europe. It is an apocalyptic time of plague, war, lawlessness and religious breakdown. It is also a time of great pageantry and massive excess. The descriptions of some of the royal feasts are simply amazing, given the poverty of the peasants who had to support them. The book describes knights, great battles, crusades against the infidel, and the chivalric code. It describes frequent peasant uprisings against excessive taxati More...

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Sep 21, 2011

Bruce rated it:

Tuchman published this book in 1978. In her preface she makes clear that she is interested in comparing the 14th century in Europe - a time of war, disease, social and economic dislocation, and general demoralization - with the two 20th century decades before the book’s publication. One could legitimately argue that the same issues apply during the first eleven years of the 21st century. Tuchman’s method is to use an actual French nobleman, Enguerrand de Coucy VII, as an exemplar whom she the More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 30, 2011

Geoff rated it:

One of the best histories there is. I started this long ago, came back to it recently and devoured it. Took me four weeks, because the prose is so dense and I want to understand EVERYTHING.

Two major things have changed since my last try at this book:

1. I've been to a few of the places they're talking about
2. I have a regular internet connection now.

Let me tell you, being able to wiki these historical figures is the single best guard against all those ancien More...

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May 10, 2011

Emma rated it:

A friend of mine, knowing my love for the Middle Ages, suggested I read this book. This is an excellent and very thorough book on the 14th century. The Middle Ages is a major part of the High School history curriculum in France, but I still discovered many things here I had never heard about the Middle Ages.

Tuchman had a genius idea by weaving her study around the character of Enguerrand de Coucy (1340-1397). He is a central character in the national history of the time, and with his More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 27, 2011

Rachael rated it:

Let me be clear: this is an amazingly well researched book. However, as a lay person with a strong but passing interest in world history, it was more detail than I could slog through.

I made it just past the chapter on the Black Plague and had to stop (about 100 pages in). Tuchman clearly knows almost everything there is to know about 14th century Europe. Unfortunately for this reader, she imparts way to much in the text. I am a fairly fast reader, but was slowed down considerably by More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 14, 2011

John rated it:

Often, it is difficult for us to put ourselves into the frame of mind of a different era: even just a decade before we were born--or, for that matter, precisely when we were born--can be a difficult imaginative exercise. A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara Tuchman does an excellent job of helping the modern reader understand not only what happened 600-700 years ago in Europe at the end of the Medieval period but also to understand better the profound differences in the way t More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Feb 09, 2010

Phillip rated it:

[The core of my comments start in the third paragraph, for those of you uninterested in circumstantial details.:]

I stared reading this book in July of 2009. I was intrigued by the authors premise of examining an entire century through the experience of one man whom she, through her research, found to have been involved with most of the major events of the last half of that century. What most intrigued me was the fact that I had never heard of Enguerrand de Coucy VII Before. So I du More...

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May 26, 2009

Trevor rated it:

I have been recommended this book by many of my good reads friends, and so I’ve read it. My friend Eric’s review says simply, “Normally, I have always enjoyed Barbara Tuchman's books, but this one, while very interesting, I felt I had to struggle a bit”.

This is a very uncharacteristic review by Eric. I think Eric is one of the most thoughtful and best reviewers on this site. His reviews generally give valuable insights into a book and unfortunately far too often have me adding boo More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Sep 07, 2011

Marilyn rated it:

A long-time admirer of Tuchman's writing, I was delighted when A Distant Mirror was finally made available as an ebook recently. I read it when it was published in 1978 and have read at least portions of it again several times over the years. I am so pleased to be able to read it again in a font size I can adjust up and on an ereader weighing less than a pound.

It's a history of the Fourteenth Century, an incredibly busy and "interesting" century - in the way that our last More...

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Sep 08, 2011

Tim rated it:

I read this book some time during the late 1980s and it was the first of Barbara's books to pass through my hands. Despite having a life-long love of history (except for a three year period from first year of high school to third year - bad teachers make make students) I wasn't that knowledgeable about the 14th century. Ms Tuchman changed all of that. Her writing is clear, well-researched and accessible. Most books on that period that you get are written by professors from one university or anot More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Apr 24, 2009

Pbwritr rated it:

It took me a long time to read this book, because it is so dense with information. Even though I have a master's degree in European History and taught it for a while, there were so many things in this book that I didn't know. This book should be a foundation for understanding the world that went before us. Tuchman does an incredible job in providing an eagle eye view of one individual over the course of the 14th century while incorporating him into French politics, religious issues, the econo More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Oct 02, 2011

Judy rated it:

A wonderfully detailed book about the 14th Century in Europe that included chivalry, castles, and crusades, but also the chaos of the Hundred Years War, the Black Death, the Black Prince, the flagellants, and the Great Schism. In her investigation of the 14th Century, Tuchman follows the life of Enguerrand de Coucy and uses his career as a French knight to organize her explanations of the politics of the age. Life was not easy in the 14th Century, especially if you were not part of the ruling More...

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Jan 10, 2012

Gudrun rated it:

Barbara Tuchman's voluminous narrative about politics, religion, morals, economy, wars, growth and decay in the 14th century has kept me in suspense for two months, it wasn't easy to lay down the book. Now that I have finally finished it, there is a big cinemascope film about the scenery and life in 14th century France still running in the background of my imagination. I love this book, it is meticulously researched and presented in such a lively spellbinding way that you wouldn't miss even the More...

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Jul 19, 2011

Ross rated it:

I have read a lot of historical fiction set in the middle ages, but until recently no real history. A while ago I read "The Year 1000" which made the main point that almost nothing is really known about the period. It is known, however, that it was a relatively prosperous time for the common people, largely due to the benificent climate of the mideval warm period.
In great contrast, just 300 years later, Tuchman's book details a period about which a great deal is known. And it wa More...

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Feb 15, 2009

Michael rated it:

Wonderfully researched and written piece of history centered around the year 1347 when the Black Plague first appeared in Europe and all the breakouts in subsequent decades. Been a long time, one thing I remember clearly is that whenever a town in, say, France would have an outbreak, the angry survivors would storm the small Jewish neighborhood in that town (usually comprising some tiny minority of residents) and beat and kill all the Jews, it was depressingly consistent. Kind of reminds me of M More...

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Jun 09, 2011

Jane rated it:

I had read this book in my early twenties when I was more intellectually nimble. I wanted to see how it was now that I am more worldly and wise. I still think it is an impressive history, but I found that I didn't care about the details. It is a very thorough book and there are lots of characters and battles etc. I read the first part carefully but then I started skimming the end. I feel like I got the point and it was just so slow. I can't remember how I felt when I read it the first time More...

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May 03, 2010

Lightreads rated it:

Don’t let the breadth of the title mislead you: this isn’t a history of the fourteenth century, it’s a history of France from about 1340 to 1400 through the career of a noble man, with occasional jaunts to England and the Italian city states. Not that there’s anything wrong with that – aside from one or two things, noted below – just for clarity.

My favorite parts of this book were the slice-of-life sections: what French peasants ate, what people talked about at court dinners, the lif More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Sep 03, 2008

Jan rated it:

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.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)