I need the summary of A Distant Mirror by Barbara W. Tuchman?

Question

I think it is about Medieval History

Answer 1

It is about the 14th century and an excellent book at that. She focuses on life in the 14th century using a main character who actually live through most o the period.

To provide a central figure in her sweeping narrative, Tuchman chose the French nobleman Enguerrand de Coucy, partly because he lived a relatively long life and could therefore stay in the story during most of the 14th century. (De Coucy was born in 1340, seven years before the Black Death began in southern Italy. He died in 1397.) But he was chosen mostly because he was in the forefront of action, tied as he was to both France and England. De Coucy was a French noble, but he married a daughter of Edward III of England.



The book covers the cataclysms suffered by Europe in the 14th century: the Hundred Years' War, the Black Plague, the papal schism, pillaging mercenaries, and popular revolts, including the Jacquerie in France, ruthlessly suppressed by de Coucy and his contemporaries, the liberation of Switzerland, the Battle of the Golden Spurs and peasant uprisings against laws that enforced the use of hops in beer. However, Tuchman does not just focus on political and religious changes. She begins her book with a discussion of the Little Ice Age, a change in climate that lowered the average temperature of Europe until the 18th century. Tuchman also takes care to describe the lives of the people, from nobles and clergymen, right down to the peasantry.

Answer 2

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RE:

I need the summary of A Distant Mirror by Barbara W. Tuchman?

I think it is about Medieval History

Answer 3

A Distant Mirror

Answer 4

Barbara Tuchman transports the reader from the present world to fourteenth century France where we witness the contradictions, the decline and ultimately the self-destruction of the age of chivalry. We travel on a journey, via the life of a unique French nobleman, to world characterised by conflict and fear. In a world of political ambition, terror, inequality, and exploitation we learn of the great events of the age including the schism of Rome, the great plague, the crusades and the wars with England and other states. Barely surviving was the lowly peasant despite exploitation by state, church, landowner and mercenary alike. A historical tour de force.

Answer 5

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It's about Medieval Europe. Copyright 1978 Edit: From the back cover--"The 14th century gives us back two contradictory images: on the one hand a glittering time of crusades and castles, cathedrals and chivalry and exquisitely illuminated Books of Hours; on the other, a time of ferocity and spiritual agony--a world plunged into chaos. Barbara Tuchman anatomizes the century, revealing to us both the great rhythms of history and the grain and texture of domestic life as it was lived: what childhood was like; what marriage meant; how money, taxes, and war dominated the lives of serf, noble, and clergy alike. Here are guilty passions; loyalties and treacheries; political assassinations; sea battles and sieges; fear of the end of the world; corruption in high places and a yearning for reform; satire and humor; sorcery and demonology; lust and sadism on the stage. Here are proud cardinals, beggars, bailiffs, feminists, Jews, scholars of the university, grocers, bankers, clerks, sorcerers, mercenaries, saints and mystics, lawyers and tax collectors, and, dominating all, the knight in his valor and 'furious follies', a 'terrible worm in an iron cocoon." College level reading. 650+ pages. A good book.

Answer 6

I thought it was excellent. I'm not big on the middle ages, but I'd read anything by Tuchman.

Answer 7

Read it. It s a great book.

Answer 8

um maybe sparknotes.com has it