A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century info
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The author looks into the history of Western Europe between 1300 and 1450, drawing parallels with the 20th century and looks into Chaucer, Boccaccio, The Hundred Years' War, pilgrimages, plagues and revolts against a poll tax, amongst other things. Tuchman has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for "August 1914" and "Sand Against Wind" and her other novels are "The Proud Tower", "The Zimmermann Telegram" and "Bible and Sword".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 exploi