For this post, the fourth and final one on my favorite history book, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitious 14th Century by Barbara Tuchman, I wish I had a deep-voiced television announcer to say, “Previously on Wendy Brandes Jewelry …” and give a summary of the three preceding posts. Since I don’t have that guy, I’ll…
a distant mirror
Book Club: A Distant Mirror, Part III
Welcome to Part III of my report on A Distant Mirror, The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara Tuchman. Read Part I and Part II to get yourselves oriented. On Saturday, in my second of a series of posts on the book A Distant Mirror, I listed the disasters of the 1300s. Those included what Tuchman…
Book Club: A Distant Mirror, Part II
Today is a day for celebration: it is the one-year-and-one-day procrastination-versary of my introduction to my favorite history book, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara Tuchman. On March 26, 2009, I posted about A Distant Mirror and told you to come back the next week for more. I wrote a long and…
Book Club: Introduction to A Distant Mirror
It’s become de rigueur for newspaper columnists, bloggers and people standing around the water cooler to bemoan the decline of civilization as evidenced by what one historian called “economic chaos, social unrest, high prices, profiteering, depraved morals, lack of production, industrial indolence, frenetic gaiety, wild expenditure, luxury, debauchery, social and religious hysteria, greed, avarice, maladministration,…