A distant mirror : the calamitous 14th century [1st trade ed., ISBN: 9780307291608

Very slight signs of age or use to 1978 Edition, Owner's name inside. DJ is browned at top edge and slightly edgeworn and has extra folds on the front flap 4 photo sections, Two time Pulitzer Prize winning author, distinguished and widely read historian. 6 1/2 By 9 3/4" 2" thick. 677 pages. examines not only the great rhythms of history but the grain and texture of domestic life: what childhood was like; what marriage meant; how money, taxes, and war dominated the lives of serf, noble, and clergy alike. Examines The History Of Fourteenthcentury Europe As Background To The Life Of Enguerrand De Coucy Vii, One Of The Most Prominent French Knights Of That Time. I Am The Sire De Coucy: The Dynasty -- Born To Woe: The Century -- Youth And Chivalry -- War -- This Is The End Of The World: The Black Death -- The Battle Of Poitiers -- Decapitated France: The Bourgeois Rising And The Jacquerie -- Hostage In England -- Enguerrand And Isabella -- Sons Of Iniquity -- The Gilded Shroud -- Double Allegiance -- Coucy's War -- England's Turmoil -- The Emperor In Paris -- The Papal Schism -- Coucy's Rise -- The Worms Of The Earth Against The Lions -- The Lure Of Italy -- A Second Norman Conquest -- The Fiction Cracks -- The Siege Of Barbary -- In A Dark Wood -- Danse Macabre -- Lost Opportunity -- Nicopolis -- Hung Be The Heavens With Black. Barbara W. Tuchman. Includes Index. Bibliography: P. [599]-617. Amazon.com Review In this sweeping historical narrative, Barbara Tuchman writes of the cataclysmic 14th century, when the energies of medieval Europe were devoted to fighting internecine wars and warding off the plague. Some medieval thinkers viewed these disasters as divine punishment for mortal wrongs; others, more practically, viewed them as opportunities to accumulate wealth and power. One of the latter, whose life informs much of Tuchman's book, was the French nobleman Enguerrand de Coucy, who enjoyed the opulence and elegance of the courtly tradition while ruthlessly exploiting the peasants under his thrall. Tuchman looks into such events as the Hundred Years War, the collapse of the medieval church, and the rise of various heresies, pogroms, and other events that caused medieval Europeans to wonder what they had done to deserve such horrors. "Wise, witty, and wonderful . . . A great book, in a great historical tradition." _Commentary_ The 14th century gives us back two contradictory images: a glittering time of crusades and castles, cathedrals and chivalry, and a dark time of ferocity and spiritual agony, a world plunged into a chaos of war, fear and the Plague. Barbara Tuchman anatomizes the century, revealing both the great rhythms of history and the grain and texture of domestic life as it was lived. Formidable and grand on a hilltop in Picardy, the five towered castle of Coucy dominated the approach to Paris from the north, but whether as guardian or as challenger of the monarchy in the capital was an open question. Examines The History Of Fourteenth Century Europe As Background To The Life Of Enguerrand De Coucy Vii, One Of The Most Prominent French Knights Of That Time. Codiacum, supposedly derived from Codex, codicis, meaning a tree trunk stripped of its branches such as those the Gauls used to build their palisades.