A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

by Barbara W. Tuchman

If our last decade or two of collapsing assumptions has been a period of unusual discomfort, it is reassuring to know that the human species has lived through worse before. Curiously, the “phenomenal parallels” have been applied by another historian to earlier years of this century. Comparing the aftermaths of the Black Death and of World War I, James Westfall Thompson found all the same complaints: economic chaos, social unrest, high prices, profiteering, depraved morals, lack of production, industrial indolence, frenetic gaiety, wild expenditure, luxury, debauchery, social and religious hysteria, greed, avarice, maladministration, decay of manners. “History never repeats itself,” said Voltaire; “man always does.” Thucydides, of course, made that principle the justification of his work.

this is why I had to read this again