A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

A "marvelous history"* of medieval Europe, from the bubonic plague and the Papal Schism to the Hundred Years' War, by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Guns of August *Lawrence Wright, author of The End of October, in The Wall Street Journal The fourteenth century reflects two contradictory images: on the one hand, a glittering time of crusades and castles, cathedrals and chivalry, and the exquisitely decorated Books of Hours; and on the other, a time of ferocity and spiritual agony, a world of chaos and the plague. Barbara Tuchman reveals both the great rhythms of history and the grain and texture of domestic life as it was lived. Here are the guilty passions, loyalties and treacheries, political assassinations, sea battles and sieges, corruption in high places and a yearning for reform, satire and humor, sorcery and demonology, and lust and sadism on the stage. Here are proud cardinals, beggars, feminists, university scholars, grocers, bankers, mercenaries, mystics, lawyers and tax collectors, and, dominating all, the knight in his valor and "furious follies," a "terrible worm in an iron cocoon."

About the Author :
Barbara W. Tuchman (1912-1989) was a self-trained historian and author who achieved prominence with The Zimmerman Telegram and international fame with The Guns of August, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1963. She received her BA degree from Radcliffe College in 1933 and worked as a research assistant at the Institute of Pacific Relations in New York and Tokyo from 1934 to 1935. She then began working as a journalist and contributed to publications including The Nation, for which she covered the Spanish Civil War as a foreign correspondent in 1937. Her other books, include The Proud Tower, A Distant Mirror, Practicing History, The March of Folly, The First Salute, and Stilwell and the American Experience in China: 1911-45, also awarded the Pulitzer Prize. In 1980 the National Endowment for the Humanities selected her to deliver the Jefferson Lecture, the US government's highest honor for intellectual achievement in the humanities. Wanda McCaddon (d. 2023) narrated well over six hundred titles for major audiobook publishers, sometimes with the pseudonym Nadia May or Donada Peters. She earned the prestigious Audio Award for best narration and numerous Earphones Awards. She was named a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine.

Review :
"[Wanda McCaddon] renders interesting even Tuchman's most pedantic moments of scene-setting...[McCaddon's] reading, with impeccable French and English accents, immerses the reader in the lengthy narrative, mixing politics with the personal. Humorous asides, especially commentary from peasantry...enliven the telling." -- "AudioFile" "Barbara Tuchman at the top of her powers...A beautiful, extraordinary book...She has done nothing finer." -- "Wall Street Journal" "Beautifully written, careful, and thorough in its scholarship...What Ms. Tuchman does superbly is to tell how it was...No one has ever done this better." -- "New York Review of Books" "Wise, witty, and wonderful...A great book, in a great historical tradition." -- "Commentary"