{"product_id":"9780345283948","title":"A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century","description":"\u003cb\u003eBarbara W. Tuchman—the acclaimed author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning classic \u003ci\u003eThe Guns of August\u003c\/i\u003e—once again marshals her gift for character, history, and sparkling prose to compose an astonishing portrait of medieval Europe.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The fourteenth century reflects two contradictory images: on the one hand, a glittering age of crusades, cathedrals, and chivalry; on the other, a world plunged into chaos and spiritual agony. In this revelatory work, Barbara W. Tuchman 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. Granting her subjects their loyalties, treacheries, and guilty passions, Tuchman re-creates the lives of proud cardinals, university scholars, grocers and clerks, saints and mystics, lawyers and mercenaries, and, dominating all, the knight—in all his valor and “furious follies,” a “terrible worm in an iron cocoon.”\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003ePraise for \u003ci\u003eA Distant Mirror\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Beautifully written, careful and thorough in its scholarship . . . What Ms. Tuchman does superbly is to tell \u003ci\u003ehow \u003c\/i\u003eit was. . . . No one has ever done this better.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe New York Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “A beautiful, extraordinary book . . . Tuchman at the top of her powers . . . She has done nothing finer.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Wise, witty, and wonderful . . . a great book, in a great historical tradition.”\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—Commentary\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e","brand":"Random House Publishing Group","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47010763243760,"sku":"9780345283948","price":10.18,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780345283948","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}