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tome15 's review for:
A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century
by Barbara W. Tuchman
Tuchman, Barbara W. A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century. 1978. Random House, 1987.
Barbara Tuchman’s readable history of the European late middle ages won a national book award. Academic historians grumped that she used outdated translations and depended too much on secondary sources. Well, OK, though their complaints do sometimes sound a little like jealousy. Certainly, though, the book’s approach to history does seem a bit dated in its great and not-so-great man approach to historical causation. How much different, for instance, would history have been if knights had abandoned the myth of chivalry for a more modern approach to warfare? Maybe a lot, maybe a little, depending on which knight managed it in which battles. Two complaints are harder to dismiss. Tuchman has an if-it-bleeds-it-leads approach to narrative. Good for selling books, but it may miss some important trends. Her narrative style also makes the book heavy on detail at the risk of burying the argument. But the details are fun, and they do often leave one shaking the head in wonder. Finally, the individual characters do come to life in some particularly modern ways. There is a late-century duke of Milan who reminds me a lot of our most recent former president. It is instructive to learn that the 14th century also had more than its share of fake news, especially regarding women and Jews. The book is certainly worth reading, therefore, if only to remind us that plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
Barbara Tuchman’s readable history of the European late middle ages won a national book award. Academic historians grumped that she used outdated translations and depended too much on secondary sources. Well, OK, though their complaints do sometimes sound a little like jealousy. Certainly, though, the book’s approach to history does seem a bit dated in its great and not-so-great man approach to historical causation. How much different, for instance, would history have been if knights had abandoned the myth of chivalry for a more modern approach to warfare? Maybe a lot, maybe a little, depending on which knight managed it in which battles. Two complaints are harder to dismiss. Tuchman has an if-it-bleeds-it-leads approach to narrative. Good for selling books, but it may miss some important trends. Her narrative style also makes the book heavy on detail at the risk of burying the argument. But the details are fun, and they do often leave one shaking the head in wonder. Finally, the individual characters do come to life in some particularly modern ways. There is a late-century duke of Milan who reminds me a lot of our most recent former president. It is instructive to learn that the 14th century also had more than its share of fake news, especially regarding women and Jews. The book is certainly worth reading, therefore, if only to remind us that plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.