A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

Written by Barbara W. Tuchman

Narrated by Aviva Skell

The Bubonic Plague of the 14th century killed one third of all human beings in Europe and Western Asia; many who survived the plague killed each other in the Hundred Years War that followed. What was it like to live in this calamitous century, when knighthood (and much more) died a violent death?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781456125035

Reviews for A Distant Mirror

[mutantpudding · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Found this surprisingly easy to get through considering the audiobook was over 25 hours long and I listened on actual speed. I liked it but not something I would recommend unless you are really really into late medieval history.

[library_lin · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Tapestries decorated the castles and halls of royalty and noble throughout the medieval period. They were stunning examples of textile art that instructed, entertained, and warmed those around them. Similarly, Barbara Tuchman took the various people and events of Europe throughout the 14th century to do the same for us. While her focus is on France, she must weave plotlines from England, Italy, Spain, Germany, Hungary, and the Middle East to tell the story because they were all intertwined. Her early description of the period of which she writes, “a violent, tormented, bewildered, suffering and disintegrating age, a time, as many thought, of Satan triumphant,” could describe our time as well. Despite her warning, I was unprepared for the extent of violence and disregard for life in general that defined the period. The Black Death and official corruption caused suffering everywhere. The common people were used and abused to provide luxury and excesses for the rich. The church was more interested in money than souls. Protests were brutally suppressed. And no one, it seemed, especially the ruling classes, felt any compunction to honor their agreements. It seems we’ve learned little. But the experience of reading the densely-packed narrative felt quite a bit like following the threads of a tapestry. You had to look at minute details to step back and appreciate the whole.In my estimation, it is a masterpiece of historical instruction and entertainment. Tuchman ties up loose ends by examining the period that followed it. She muses how the modern era arose like grass from the societal cracks and rifts in the medieval period.

[alexlubertozz-893592 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I am always amazed at people who don't seem to enjoy or understand the relevance of history. Trying to understand the present without a knowledge of the past is like trying to figure out what's wrong with a clock by examining its face. It's like being a leaf that doesn't know it's part of a tree.

In Tuchman's comprehensive look at 14th century Europe, we see the beginnings of our modern market economy, the notion of romantic love, trade unions, urbanization, nationalism, anti-semitism (portents of the Holocaust), ideas of chivalry in warfare being torn down by advances in technology, and on and on. I found this book to be endlessly fascinating, told in a lively and engaging manner.

The title, A Distant Mirror, refers to our own calamitous 20th century, with its own ongoing wars, revolutions, genocides, famines, and plagues. While our 20th-century descents into madness were more efficiently devastating, Europe in the 14th century was an everyday kind of madness. Reading this sort of history makes me believe in an evolution of human civilization (distinct from human evolution, which I believe happens on a much longer timeline). Despite the sometimes eerie similarities between the 1300s and 1900s, I would still argue that this book will give you a new perspective on just how far we've come.

[cecrow · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

An amazing collecting of facts, figures and narrative, emphasized by the introduction that outlines the difficulty any researcher faces when looking into this era. Tuchman set out to write about the Black Plague but couldn't distinguish its effects from all the other calamities of the period, leading her to a broader study that centers on the latter half of the 14th century. In addition to the Black Plague and the Hundred Years War, these years also featured (among a multitude of other things) Chaucer and Boccaccio, the "hysterical mystic" Margery Kempe, Thomas Wyclif, Saint Catherine of Siena, the Dance Macabre, and concluded with the disaster at Nicopolis.France is the setting for nearly all of the action of the Hundred Years War, an event which through its constancy remains the central focus. Tuchman selects a French knight who marries an English princess as an individual to structure her narrative around, since he is conveniently placed at all the major centres of action. She also uses events in the life of Enguerrand de Coucy to explore asides such as the lives of peasants, roles for women, etc. but it is the war's unfurling that primarily directs the action. Early, spectacular English victories created the perception of France as a land of spoils for the taking, while the French were consumed by internal disorders and too frequently prioritized glory over strategy. This war spelled the end for chivalry, Enguerrand arguably the last knight worthy of the name, as softness and immorality consumed it from within, tactics from without.Tuchman does almost nothing explicit to draw the parallels between the 14th and 20th centuries that she proposes are there. She does not need to. The Hundred Years War contrasts with the World Wars, Black Plague with Spanish Flu (and Covid, if you stretch a bit). The 14th century had its own unpopular wars, political and religious scandals, and horrific acts of anti-Semitism. Should a time machine hurl you randomly into the past, pray you do not land here. A church fallen into usury and schism, random taxation to the point of starving its people and destroying their livelihoods, no recourse to justice or the law, no protection from attack by violent roving bands, unpredictable recursions of the plague, a dearth of heroes or hope ... The common people saw no ray of light in any direction, nor indication how one might come. If they rose up in violence, as they tried multiple times, they were put down like dogs or worse. In place of Cold War gloom they awaited the end times, but with the hope of something good to come afterwards. There was no other hope to cling to. As always after reading a book like this, the details begin to fade. I'll retain my impression of an age of chaos, when Western civilization was at lowest tide since the fall of Rome. In her epilogue, Tuchman briefly covers the 15th century in as many pages to demonstrate how a stumbling end to the Hundred Years War, a resolution to the schism, the dawn of the printing press and the age of exploration slowly began to point the way out of these doldrums. I wish she'd had the lifetimes necessary to carry this on as a series, or that I could find a similar layperson's overview of every historical century. Perhaps there are for most, but I'd wager this one to be a standout entry.

[charlie68_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

History that reads like a novel with Engerrand De Coucy as the main character and what a harrowing trip it is. Were there any truly righteous men or women? Makes one look at current events in a different light.

[yhgail · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I learned a lot from this book. It is long and much is details about battles and family relationships. None the less, much of it held interest. I listened on audible and will probably listen again sometime in the future. The story holds much insight about western culture today.

[piquant00 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Eminently readable history of Europe in the high middle ages, with parallels to our "modern" sociopolitical problems.

[ellegato · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Though in some ways dated, this is still a highly informative and entertaining book about the 14th century in Europe. The book explores the catastrophes that befell 14th century Europe--mostly the Black Death, the Papal Schism, and the incessant warring that consumed France and England. By illustrating how knights of that era failed to live up to their own chivalric standards, Tuchman shows us a system of oppression that impacted everyone, from serfs to kings. The personalities are memorable and the use of Coucy as a mirror through which to see the era is well done. Tuchman wrote with a descriptive flair that brings long-dead words and deeds to life again. Definitely a worthy examination of an era of both great despair and great beauty.

[jeterat-844391 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Just finished this today. Although, by history standards, it's 677 pages aren't really that long, this one took me several months to finish and I found myself picking it up and putting it back down frequently. I finally finished it in one final push on audiobook. It's a beautiful, panoramic history of the 14th century in the mainstream, narrative history style (which Tuchman did a lot to popularize) and one of her later works. She follows the life of Coucy, a French nobleman, and gives a chronological accounting of the 14th century through the lens of the Hundred Years War.

I think that, for all that the text and her writing are beautiful, it could have been significantly reduced in scope. It suffers from having too much to talk about all at once, and in several long stretches, the book becomes a chronological listing of feasts, tournaments, pestilence, names, marriages, deaths, and battles. There wasn't a thesis to really follow throughout the text, and I wondered in many places at her ability to have really researched some of the information she writes. Her small observations of events, down to whether or not Coucy bowed to this or that noble, seem too minuscule to have been recorded by chroniclers of the time (but, obviously, this is an unfounded observation on my part - I don't know enough to really know this). Although many commentators and reviewers have also commented on it's lack of information about the peasants, I actually didn't think any less of the text for that. Most histories of this period focus on nobles because most of the surviving archival information is on the nobility.

All in all, I do recommend this text, but it is not my favorite of her works. I love the choice of topic, but wish that she had had an editor to reign in her scope on this work. As always, her voice in the text is strong and her small observations and quips here and there, make it really worthwhile. She does a lot to make the period real to me as a reader, which redeemed this text for me and gave it four instead of three stars. I appreciated her constant attention to detail, pointing out on every occasion how and why the 14th century is so distant to modern readers (down to the way in which the landscape differs from that of modern Europe).

[lissabeth21 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Great look at this specific era in a way that made the people and the times come to life.

[ikeman100 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Amazing book. This well researched tome is packed full of history and facts about the 14th century. Tuchman is good at keeping, what can be tedious, history interesting. I will be interested in any of her other works.

[britt84 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In this work, Tuchman introduces us to the life and times of the 14th century by following the story of Enguerrand, Sire of Souci.I very much enjoyed this book. I've been trying to brush up on my knowledge of history, and this has been a great read for me. Tuchman writes in an accessible style and takes time to explain and elaborate, making it a work that is quite complete and goes into depth, without it being too complex for people who are not well-versed in history.I liked the fact that she chose to tell the story of a specific person. It makes the story more personal, interesting to follow, and gives it a very human aspect. This makes it much more fun to read than a dry history textbook with just numbers and facts. In a way, it reads a bit like a fictional historical novel - but with much more information.Though Tuchman writes the story of a single person in history, she also gives a lot of information surrounding this story. In many ways, Enguerrand de Souci was not a 'typical' 14th century person - he was an important nobleman with ties to both England as well as France, giving him quite a unique position in this period of warfare between the two countries. Tuchman expands the story with a lot of information about other aspects of the 14th century, the situation people lived in, the culture and the politics. Though I did sometimes find these explanations broke up the story a bit, they were also very welcome and give a very complete view of 14th century life.

[mafinokc · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Harrowing and infuriating. Never was there a more vivid narrative of man's inhumanity to man and the indecency of archaic thinking.

[kukulaj · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A splendid book, without doubt. The action runs from London to Byzantium and somehow Tuchman keeps it comprehensible or anyway close. Tuchman mentions at the beginning of her forward that the preceding two decades had uncomfortably collapsed assumptions: that would have been 1958 to 1978. Practically forty years later, has that trajectory of collapse been reversed? Gun violence is in the news - but it sure seems like our level of violence doesn't reach even close to that of the 14th Century! The period covered in this book was the decline of chivalry, the mounted warrior. Our period of industrial warfare still seems solidly on its legs, but perhaps that will prove to be a view distorted by our perspective, with our blindness to our future. Will aircraft carriers soon become as useless as lances? So much of our modern world was formed in response to the disintegration of the preceding world. As this modern world in turn disintegrates, again a new world will be patched together from the pieces, as a way to respond to the crises of our day. Tuchman provides a wonderful mirror in which to start to see the shape of such a trajectory.

[mbmackay · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

All historians should write as well as Barbara Tuchman! She tells the history in beautiful clear prose, and then throws in the most wonderful comments and asides that brings the book to life.The 14th century was not a good time in Europe. There was almost constant warfare, the plague killed more than half of the population, government was functionally incompetent, the church was venal and corrupt, and a major schism in the church exacerbated the failings.Tuchman tells the story of the century by using the life of the Sire of Courcy, a senior French noble, as a narrative thread. As a result, there is some concentration on France and England (as traditional foes) but she manages to weave in enough of the rest of Europe to make a coherent picture. There are some gems of information: the fact that the Church owned 30% of all property in England was one I particularly liked.It is hard to see the origins of the modern state in the environment of the 14th century. The centralised government had not been created; the role of the noble class was to fight, but they were not a standing army, or even very effective - too much fighting was centred on personal glory rather than results; taxes were mostly ad hoc and totally paid by the bourgeois and the peasants - the church and the nobility were exempt. As the title of the book says - a distant mirror.Read October 2014

[japaul22 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I've been reading this book off and on for the last two months, and I can safely say that Tuchman thoroughly presents the 14th century through great research and a readable writing style. As in most very long nonfiction books, I must admit that there were sections that I personally found kind of boring, but most likely everyone who reads this will find something to love and something to skim and it will probably be different for everyone. Tuchman covers a lot in this book. My favorite parts were actually the more general sections where she talks about everyday life for varying classes of people. I also like where she wrote about the Black Death and its effects on population and the mindset of the people. I was interested in reading about the schism in the church, with one Pope in Rome and one Pope in Avignon. I was also interested in the general information about warfare and chivalry (the Hundred Years War between France and England takes place during this time plus some Crusades), though I get bored reading about specific battles and sieges. I also thought it was great that she chose one nobleman, Enguerrand VII de Coucy, to follow throughout the book. Enguerrand was integral in the politics and warfare of the era and was well respected as a intelligent, moderating force amidst a lot of craziness. Actually, literal craziness, as several of the Kings of France were mad in the 14th century. As always with books that cover these sorts of events, I personally am not very interested in reading about battles or in really understanding the politics of the day in any depth. But that's just my personal taste. This book is both broad and focused and I think that everyone will find something in it to satisfy themself.

[toonc-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Many books in this style of the historical novel followed, but couldn't compete with this. This could be subjective since I was young then and hadn't started my history studies yet.

[william345 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A vivid and detailed look into a lost world. The major players are The Black Death, The Hundred Years War, the sick, uproarious joke of chivalric valor, The Papal Schism, ruinous taxation, serfdom, petty feudal institutions, the utter absence of reason among the so-called ruling classes, murderous vengeance, horrendous peculation, brigandry, the subjection of women, the sheer endless cruelty of mankind, crusade against the "infidel," and so on. A GR friend said that he was disappointed in this book because it did not offer the narrow focus and sleek thematic underpinnings of Tuchman's The March of Folly. I see his point. It should be noted, however, that Folly is a very different kind of book. Folly is a deft study of the almost systematic loss of rational method leaders experience once they are dazzled by the trappings of ultimate power. A Distant Mirror is a survey of a lost world. As such it brings before the reader an almost encyclopedic survey of the particulars of that time, a few major ones outlined above. Reading A Distant Mirror is like being in thrall to an endless film loop of natural disasters, pitiless murders, and roadside accidents. Tuchman brings order to this concatenation of relentless self-woundings so that try as we might we cannot look away. If there is only one book you read on the Middle Ages it might be this one. It is not for the squeamish or those afraid of the dark. It is not a light beach- or inflight-read. Highly recommended.

[kirklowery · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Tuchman is my ideal historian. She is self-taught, but she is also a natural for presenting historical narrative. As two Pulitzer prizes attest.

In this book she takes one (significant) noble family in France and tells the story of the effect of the Black Plague on Europe. In the process she integrates social, economic, military religious and political history into one whole. Will and Ariel Durant would have been proud!

I am not a medievalist, nor the son of one. So I will abstain from any attempt to evaluate her scholarship. But writing is something I know a bit about; if you care about your writing skills, read this book for a marvelous example of how to do it.

[lyndatrue · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I love this book, and its look at the world of Europe in the 14th century. I've probably loved it a bit *too* much, since it's becoming fragile. I may go looking for a better copy, hopefully with all the miraculous pictures and maps of this one.This is not a book for your Kindle or Nook. The maps alone are a reminder of how changed and homogenous our own world is, and how complex and convoluted those times were. Fascinating times.(I found another book exactly the same as mine, but in much better condition, I'm happy to say. Yes, I now have two.)

[ecw0647 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Normally, I have always enjoyed Barbara Tuchman's books, but this one, while very interesting, I felt I had to struggle a bit.

[wildbill_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Barbara Tuchman has been one of my favorite historians since the first time I read Guns of August. I have started A Distant Mirror several times and never got very far. I started this time listening to an audio book and liked it so much I took out my print edition. There is a difference between the two and listening to a book is not the same as reading it. Recently I listened to an audio book three times to get the feel that I had read it. Listening is a lot less taxing so sometimes it is all that I can do. For that I count on good narrators and the woman who narrated this book is one of the best. The Black Death 1348-1350 killed an estimated one third of the population of humanity from Iceland to India. In the first paragraph of the foreword the author sets out this event as the primary theme of her book. Intertwined with that story is a biography of Enguerrand de Coucy VII. He was one of the most powerful barons of France in the mid to late 14th century and an important political and military leader. The chronicle of his very active life helped set the tone for the book. Society and government went through significant changes as the decay of feudalism was leading to the rise of the nation state. The Reformation was bubbling up in the teachings of Wycliffe and Hus. A shift in military technology took place as the armored knight was consistently defeated by the working class longbow men. The author paints out all of these themes and many others with a broad brush and then fills in the picture with a myriad of details that fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The details tell of hours of research, the author sitting in the middle of stacks of open books with a notepad in her hand. Descriptions of rich women wearing costumes that were so wide they had to go through a doorway sideways. Festivals and carnivals where the poor were in charge making bawdy fun of the rich and powerful. Churchmen who purchase their offices and then stumble and mumble trying to read a service. The plague came in two forms, bubonic and pneumonic, and either one killed in a matter of days. There were numerous cures a few of which were as fatal as the plague. One city did keep the incidence down by a program of strict quarantine. Once one person in a house showed any symptoms all of the members of the house were locked inside to die. The drop in population meant that workers were scarce and could command higher wages. Whole villages went fallow because there was no one to work the fields. One response to the plague were the flagellants. They began to rival the church and were quickly put down.The church still held great power. The schism of two Popes meant more venality was needed to support two Holy Sees. The schism did great damage to the legitimacy of the church as some rulers played off one Pope against the other. France and England fought so much they called it the Hundred Year's War. England still ruled in Bordeaux and Calais and Guienne were ceded to England in 1360. The French lost a series of battles because they insisted on fighting in armor on muddy fields in constricted spaces. The English soldier used his longbow or a pike and defeated the flower of chivalry. The last great battle was Nicolopis where the Ottomans defeated the might of Europe with the help of their Balkan subjects.I could go on and on but the author does a much better job. Barbara Tuchman was an historian to her fingernails. It was a career she chose and worked at for decades. She wrote good literature that made history interesting for millions. The fact that she was not an academic freed her from the specialization that is a requirement in academic life. She put a number of very good books on the shelf in her career and this was one of her best.

[wagner5sarah35 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An engaging look at the 14th century through the life of Enguerrand de Coucy, a prominent French nobleman. Barbara Tuchman explores both daily life along with the schisms of the Catholic Church, the tumult of the Black Death, and the politics of the Hundred Years' War. I would recommend this book to any who wishes to understand the Later Middle Ages, as Tuchman manages to capture both the large trends of this era - shrinking population, war, religion, the decline of chivalry - and the small details - dynastic struggles, ransom demands, military tactics - with a healthy dose of pragmatism when looking at the primary sources.

[ashergabbay · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I bought Barbra Tuchman's "A Distant Mirror" ages ago, and it sat there on the shelf looking at me reprovingly all this time. I kept meaning to read it, but as a Tuchman book deserves the appropriate frame of mind and attention, I kept putting it off. Finally, I decided I could not take those looks any longer and dove right in. The book's self-explanatory subtitle is "The Calamitous 14th Century". Tuchman picked a rather obscure French nobleman by the name of Enguerrand de Coucy, and through his life (which was remarkably long for someone living at that time) recounts the horrors of that century: the Black Plague, the Hundred Years War, the internecine Papal wars, the persecution of Jews, riots, uprisings, rebellions... you get the picture. Tuchman being Tuchman, the account is detailed yet gripping, studious yet readable. I didn't enjoy "The Distant Mirror" as much as I enjoyed "The Guns of August" (arguably Tuchman's best book) or "The March of Folly", but it was still a book that kept me up long past my bedtime. If only all historians knew how to write like Tuchman.

[satyridae · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Extraordinary in its scope and clarity.

[lisamaria_c · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I first gave this massive doorstop book a try in my teens, and the immense detail, I think, is what defeated me. I remember finding it dry and tedious (a complaint echoed in the few negative reviews.) The book's greatest strength is also its greatest weakness--its density. This is an intensely rich and detailed account of "the Calamitous 14th Century" in Europe. In the Foreword Tuchman wrote she wanted to approach the story through the frame of a single life. She didn't want to choose royalty, as by definition they're an exception, but the life of a commoner would neither be well-chronicled nor give enough of a range, nor was she tempted to hang her book on the life of a clergyman, so she framed the book by choosing as a focus Enguerrand, Lord of Coucy (1340-97), a French nobleman who had the King of England as a father-in-law and died on Crusade in what is now Turkey. This doesn't read like a biography at all though. Although we get more of Coucy's story than a chronicle of his age might justify, this is a book much wider in scope than a biography would allow. And frankly, the rather rational Coucy comes across as a rather bland figure in this pageant of the High Middle Ages. This was an era that included the Black Death, peasant revolts, brigandage, Papal schism, and several decades of the Hundred Years War between England and France. This was an age that saw the faint glimmers of the Protestant Reformation in such figures as Wycliff and Hus and a flowering of great literature by Petrarch, Boccaccio and Chaucer and great mystics such as St Catherine of Sienna and Thomas Kempe.The title implies that we can better see our own times through the reflection of this bygone age. If so, Tuchman doesn't draw the comparisons for us. She described it as a time of flux and change when the "fiction" of chivalry was broken down by the disruptions brought by the Black Death. Of the entire book, I certainly found the account of the plague, "This is the End of the World" the most riveting part of the book. There were parts I did find a slog (why I'm docking a star) as it seemed at times Tuchman was determined to leave no detail of dress or feasts unlisted. But if this is a mirror to our age, I can't say I can see the resemblance. Instead what comes through to me is how alien is this far distant time in its values and structure. Especially if you're not familiar with the Middle Ages, reading this is like reading science fiction--and it's a good corrective to the prettified view of the era we get reflected back in high fantasy. And that's why this book gets high marks. Because you can't read this and not get a sense of the spirit of the age, from high to low, clergy and scholar and merchant and knight and mercenary in all its blood-soaked, anti-Semitic, misogynist glory.

[stringsn88keys · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An in-depth look at the 14th century, guided by tracing the life of a French noble of that era.

[ziska-901159 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Barbara Tuchman rocks!

[jason0goodwin · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A tour de force of history and history writing

[seriousgrace · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Huge confession. Although many people called this a interesting read, I couldn't get into it. I barely reached page 24 before I was groaning with boredom. It is obvious Tuchman writes really well and this isn't a dry account of some historical beginning, but I couldn't get into it. At all. The premise is simple. Tuchman is comparing the 14th century's turmoil (the Black Plague) with that of the horrors of World War I. Okay, it's not only about that, but that is where the title gets its name. That's as far as I got.