A Distant Mirror
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A Distant Mirror by Barbara W Tuchman
A "marvelous history"* of medieval Europe, from the bubonic plague and the Papal Schism to the Hundred Years' War, by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Guns of August*Lawrence Wright, author of The End of October, in The Wall Street Journal
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
Barbara Tuchman (1912-1989) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian whose books The Guns of August and Stilwell and the American Experience in China won her international fame.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780345349576 |
| ISBN 10 | 0345349571 |
| Title | A Distant Mirror |
| Author | Barbara W Tuchman |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Random House USA Inc |
| Year published | 1987-07-12 |
| Number of pages | 784 |
| Prizes | Winner of National Book Awards 1980 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |