A Distant Mirror

Who knew that an account of a disappeared medieval world could be so gripping?

I’ve always regarded history as a literary and intellectual exercise, and Pulitzer-winning Barbara Tuchman has been my model ever since I picked up this absorbing history of a Europe riven by war, climate catastrophes, plague, and religious schisms.

Academic historians might denigrate Tuchman’s approach, but through pen-portraits and narrative momentum, Tuchman immersed me in a world that had subtle echoes of today.

When most of us think about the 14th Century, we see it as a time of chivalry, knights, and crusades. It was anything but for most people who feared the ending of the world. It was everything that was with us still, whether corruption in high places or taxes. But it also had bankers, saints, mystics, and all the good and bad things that are with us today.  

I read Barbara Tuchman’s book over a period of two months. It was a wonderful read. Each chapter offers a glimpse of the events and happenings that shaped the world as… show more.

I rely on this book for information on the age in which Christine de Pizan lived, a turbulent era in which the hundred years war raged, the Black Death killed millions, a papal schism unsettled the Christian world, the king of France went mad, and feuding among members of the nobility disrupted every aspect of life.

Same author, but a very different book. This one chronicles a dreadful time of troubles in Europe, an age when for various reasons everything fell apart. As we will relatively soon be entering our own time of troubles—an age of mere anarchy and passionate intensity in which the existing order is overturned—Tuchman’s account may constitute a forewarning that will help us to be forearmed for living in much more challenging circumstances.

Tuchman is a great writer and a great historian who truly does make the past, and in this case a century and a plague, come alive. It is set in Europe during the 14th century and follows the life of a French nobleman as Europe endures the Black Plague, the Hundred Years’ War, the Papal Schism, and so much more.