Tuchman's A Distant Mirror, The Calamitous Fourteenth Century

In Barbara Tuchman’s, “A Distant Mirror, The Calamitous 14th Century,” the 1300s-1400s are greatly exposed as Tuchman takes her reader throughout the numerous events that took place within the given time period. Barbara uses twenty seven chapters divided into two parts to thoroughly explain her love of the fourteenth century. Tuchman begins the book by explaining she at first wanted to learn about the effects of society after the, “Black Death” epidemic that took place in Europe from 1348-1350, yet the period completely entranced her, leaving her to intricately study numerous events, such as The Hundred Years War, where she mainly covers the Battle of Poitiers in Chapter 6, and even talks about things as simple as the culture of the time period in Chapter 3. Tuchman mainly follows the story of …show more content…
Barbaras methodical phrases and deep interest in the fourteenth century is greatly displayed throughout the book. In some parts of the book, time seemed to tick by rather slowly as she would go for pages talking about seemingly unimportant things, such as in the first chapter when she is explaining the Coucy castle that is in Picardy. Although, the book quickly takes a turn as she begins explaining Coucys origins and goes onto giving a summary of the century overall. As soon as a boring scene would come, a new revelation would hit that would utterly keep the reader from putting the book down. For example, when chapter five ended, there seemed to be no other event that could have been worse than the horrible loss of 50% of the European population. Although,