Rating: 
Summary: Excellent bathroom reading
Review: I won't repeat all the descriptions of the book from the other reviews because they are very accurate, but I will say that the book is an excellent bathroom read. Pick it up and read a few pages everytime you're in there and I guarantee you'll run into chapters that will make you drag the book elsewhere for a longer read. When it bogs down in details that tire you, put it back in the bathroom again. You will finish it eventually and it will be well worth your "spare" time that you spent reading it.
Rating: 
Summary: A contorted mirror
Review: My history tutor at University snapped at me when I mentioned Barbara Tuchman. She was not 'an historian'. This book is a superb read from beginning to end and delights in telling a wonderful story of a very violent era. I am not sure that Tuchman actually proves her case that the 14th century was a distant mirror, but it is a fine piece of historical writing in any case. Even though Tuchman focuses on one slightly obsure nobleman, she manages to sweep across the history of the time and place with a relentless curiousity and drive.I disagree with my tutor and I believe this is a fine book with some of the best historical prose in the English language. As for the mirror, well it is a great title and gets you thinking, but I cannot see the link apart from the violence, which seemed to be present in every century.
Rating:
Summary: Warts 'n all history lesson!
Review: This book is long, detailed, with a host of characters who's names are almost impossible to remember. It was a tough read & I have to admit that I had to intersperse the reading of it, with a couple of "lighter" books on the side. Worthwhile though? I'll say! Tuchman has a style that brings one intimately into the world she is describing. I felt chastened by the suffering of the Black death victims, exhausted by the toil of the peasants & angered by the corruption of just about everyone else. Churchmen who sold the services that should have been freely given, many of whom shamefully refused to give plague victims last rites for fear of contagion. Nobles & knights oppressed the people they were supposed to protect. Kings & princes made pacts with each other that were never intended to be honoured. Honour, indeed, is a quality almost non-existant in these troubled times. The book describes all the trials & tribulations of 14th. century life. It's proper "warts 'n all stuff! The battles, revolutions, intrigues, tortures & the daily struggle just to get through to the next day. I particularly enjoyed learning of the main "pillars of Chivalry." Whilst one might expect to assume "valour" as a quality, try "knightly love," which was pretty much a license to go off & indulge in loose living. Marvelous! It's a demanding read but absolutely worth the effort.
Rating:
Summary: All Hail Queen Tuchman!
Review: Tuchman's book has proved an invaluable resource to me, as I am currently writing a work of fiction that takes place in 1300s London. Her book is pure pleasure to read; the writing style is fluid, vivid and colorful, and she writes with such intimacy of the characters that one could almost believe she knew King Edward or the Black Prince. In short, this book excellently portrays the 1300s in all its gruesome-yet-rivoting detail, leaving we medievalists thoroughly satiated.
Rating:
Summary: A time of Satan triumphant
Review: Very early in the book the author tells us that the 14th century in France was "a violent, tormented, bewildered, suffering and disintegrating age, a time, as many thought, of Satan triumphant." This she goes on to illustrate with a detailed description of the ravages "the Pest" or the Black Death inflicted on mankind between 1348-50, when roughly one third of those in the Eurasian continent died. Tuchman uses the device of following the story of one French noble - Enguerrand de Coucy VII - to explore much more than the Plague's impact on life. Chivalry, village life, the English and French rivalry for Aquitaine, the Papal schism and the various military campaigns that were a constant feature of the times, are all depicted in great detail. The degree of detail is both a strength and weakness of the book. As a strength Tuchman's prodigious research allows her to make deeply insightful comments on the finer details or subtleties of 14th century life. Any illusions we may have had about noble Knights and chivalrous warfare are shattered when we learn that an archer was first described as "a coward who dared not come close to his foe" and a Knight was a mere "worm in his iron cocoon." Her descriptions of village life are unforgetable and help to illustrate her point about the 14th century being extremely violent; in that sense making it A DISTANT MIRROR of our own century. Nevertheless we could have forgiven her if she had left out some details. For instance the village game "where players with hands tied behind them competed to kill a cat nailed to a post by battering it to death with their heads, at the risk of cheeks ripped open or eyes scratched out by the frantic animal's claws." If we accept the purpose of such a description - disgusting as it is - as serving to make a point, what is the value of the following minutely detailed inventory? "Their homes contained, in the case of one comfortable peasant of Normandy, two featherbeds, one wooden bed, three tables, four skillets, two pots and other cooking utensils, eight sheets, two tablecloths, one towel or napkin, a lantern, two vats for trampling grapes, two barrels and two casks, a cart, a plow, two harrows, two hoes, two scythes, one spade, one sickle, three horse collars, and a pack saddle." Don't forget the two aspirins you'll need after reading one too many pages of similar eye-crossing detail. As a well researched and richly detailed history, it's hard to top A DISTANT MIRROR. It is not an easy reading, flowing, narrative history. The best word I can find for it is dense. I have lost count of the number of times I have started and stopped. Reading it is an educational experience but finishing it is a struggle - somewhat like what living in the 14th century was like I suppose, so maybe that's the point.
Rating:
Summary: How things have not changed
Review: It is hard to believe that 6 centuries ago we felt the same as we do now. The beginnings of the check system for exchange. The horrors of the plagues, the expulsion of the jews from the continent, the excesses of the holy men and the evolution of arms from the sword to the longbow to the deadly crossbow which finished armor. The crossing of the channel and the capture of the king of France to be held for ransom.
It is truly a distant mirror and Barbara Tuchman has I think honestly depicted the times and made me know that our wars are just a continuation of history that has gone on forever.
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Summary: Its Scary Looking In the Mirror!
Review: Barbara Tuchman is without question one of the finest history writers that I have ever read, and "A Distant Mirror" is another fine example of a work by someone who was extremely gifted at her craft. Not only the writing, but the research, insights, and obvious parallels to the similarities of human beings of the 20th Century makes this a "must read" for anyone interested in history. I was especially taken by the section about the persecution of the Jews. Most think the 20th century Holocaust was a one-time, inexplicable event. Not so. Ms. Tuchman's one section on this issue has recently been expounded upon (in a more personal way) by James Carroll's in his book "Constantine's Sword." Tuchman's insights certainly lend credibility to Carroll's points. Looking in the mirror can sometimes be scary. Although progress has been made in many areas, human nature itself hasn't changed much since the 14th Century.
Rating:
Summary: THIS BOOK STICKS WITH YOU
Review: As an author with my debut novel in its initial release, I recognize a finely written story when I read one. Barbara Tuchman's A DISTANT MIRROR tells a magnificent story. The story told in A DISTANT MIRROR is one of a calamitous century. There is a Hundred Year War interrupted by brief periods of uneasy peace. There is a mysterious plague attacking people some view as being morally culpable for their illness. There is religious strife in all corners of civilization. There are massacres of people of the Jewish faith. There is the rich living in unbelievable comfort while the poor live exploited lives that are brutish, miserable, and short. No, A DISTANT MIRROR does not deal (at least directly) with the last century; it deals with the Fourteenth Century. It is a brilliant work by a brilliant historian. It is one of my favorite popular history works.
Rating:
Summary: Very informative
Review: I recently read this book as required summer reading, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The trivia is real, the people are real, and by the end you feel as if you know Enguerrand VII. The style and vocabulary is incredible, and Barbara Tuchman does a wonderful job in this great narrative. If you are a history fan, you must read this.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent History of Life Around the Hundred Year's War
Review: Who is Enguerrand de Coucy and why should we care? Coucy was a French noble whose life and position intertwined neatly with many of the momentous events that defined the 14th Century. He appears, Zelig-like, at the head of armies, at the elbow of both the Kings of France and England and in the great councils of state that determined the actions of a nascent French nation. His story is remarkable and remarkably well documented. His life and actions serve as the central thread that ties the events surrounding the Hundred Year's War between England and France together in this marvelous book. Tuchman displays this late Middle Age period in all of its nasty burtality. The Great Plague hit in several waves, reducing Europe's population by between one half and one third. A century of warfare left roving bands of knights and armed men loose in the countryside to pillage and destroy between summons to fight for king and country. The common man and woman, evolving from a status of near slavery to severe oppression, owed service to their lord and taxes to almost everyone. Tuchman brilliantly weaves the above facts of life with the politics and struggles between rival nobles, kingdoms and a corrupt church. This book is very well written, as I had always heard Tuchman's works to be. She possesses the rare ability to write solid history -- this book is fact filled, and thoroughly documented -- in the manner of a great storyteller. Her characters and events, leavened by Tuchman's wry observations and logical conclusioins, are marvelously developed. So much happened in this time period that it does bear scrutiny. Chivalry, the code of the Knight that was suppossed to benefit people in exchange for a life free from common worries, had denegrated into a corrupt facade that shielded ruthless brigands from law and sanction. The great Church, long the common denominator among disparate peoples became first hopelessly corrupt then divided for decades by rival popes more interested in Europe's balance of power among earthly kingdoms than in promoting the Kingdom to whom they suppossedly gave vasselage. Great landed nobility struggled with each other and began a transformation from nearly autonomous players in an ever changing system of alliances across nationalities to becomming the building blocks of the infant state. Policy and war rose and fell on the ability, whim and maturity of changing kings. Although our own recently passed Twentieth Century could witness evil and bloodletting on a more sustained and organized basis than any that preceeded it -- hence the title "Through a Distant Mirror," Tuchman's work also illustrates how far society has come in those parts of the world where it is civil and grounded in natural rights. Thus, Tuchman's book shows both the constant danger through time of man's darker side as well as the progress earned by those who have managed to diffuse power and ground everyday people with a voice in their affairs and rights that can not be abrogated. This is a marvelous work from every facet. I am now ordering other Tuchman books to see how she handles man's affairs in centuries distant from that enjoyed by Enguerrand de Coucy.
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