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robertrivasplata 's review for:
A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century
by Barbara W. Tuchman
A history of the 14th Century, which follows the life of French lord Enguerrand de Coucy as a kind of "main character". Full of quotable quotes & notable details. Definitely worth reading before you read Name of the Rose, or Game of Thrones. Mostly focuses on France & chivalry & war, but touches on events throughout Western Europe, and has many digressions about the daily life of regular people in towns and farms. Emphasizes that while the fighting of the Hundred Years War was sporadic, the destruction wrought by the armies that fought the war was continuous, even during the times that were supposedly peaceful. I could have read hundreds more pages of this.
The end notes contain some interesting info about sources, but they are mostly skippable. Contradictions in sources are often discussed in the text.
I like how Tuchman constantly asks "what the fuck was wrong with these people?!??" In the chapter on "Youth & Chivalry", Tuchman wonders if 14th century parents neglected their children, citing everything from a seeming dearth of literary references to motherhood & parenting to depictions of the Christ Child in art, lying "alone on the ground, swaddled or sometimes quite naked and uncovered, while an unsmiling mother gazes at him abstractedly". At another point, she speculates that most of the historical figures were actually quite young, so maybe that's why they acted so rashly. Reading in 2021, the obvious answer to what was wrong with them is head injuries, but I think we must also allow for the possibility that there wasn't anything wrong with the people of the 1300s, but Tuchman was too much of a nerd to comprehend a society of cool kids.
I got the feeling that Tuchman really came to like Enguerrand de Coucy. Relating his many accomplishments, she seemed kind of proud of him. The fact that his efforts usually failed (except for his efforts to accumulate wealth) is usually explained by the fact that they were in the service of idiotic or pointless schemes that were bound to fail no matter who was handling the diplomacy, fighting, or both.
The end notes contain some interesting info about sources, but they are mostly skippable. Contradictions in sources are often discussed in the text.
I like how Tuchman constantly asks "what the fuck was wrong with these people?!??" In the chapter on "Youth & Chivalry", Tuchman wonders if 14th century parents neglected their children, citing everything from a seeming dearth of literary references to motherhood & parenting to depictions of the Christ Child in art, lying "alone on the ground, swaddled or sometimes quite naked and uncovered, while an unsmiling mother gazes at him abstractedly". At another point, she speculates that most of the historical figures were actually quite young, so maybe that's why they acted so rashly. Reading in 2021, the obvious answer to what was wrong with them is head injuries, but I think we must also allow for the possibility that there wasn't anything wrong with the people of the 1300s, but Tuchman was too much of a nerd to comprehend a society of cool kids.
I got the feeling that Tuchman really came to like Enguerrand de Coucy. Relating his many accomplishments, she seemed kind of proud of him. The fact that his efforts usually failed (except for his efforts to accumulate wealth) is usually explained by the fact that they were in the service of idiotic or pointless schemes that were bound to fail no matter who was handling the diplomacy, fighting, or both.