The fourteenth century reflects two contradictory images: on the one hand, a glittering time of crusades and castles, cathedrals and chivalry, and the exquisitely decorated Books of Hours; and on the other, a time of ferocity and spiritual agony, a world of chaos and the plague.
Barbara Tuchman reveals both the great rhythms of history and the grain and texture of domestic life as it was lived. Here are the guilty passions, loyalties and treacheries, political assassinations, sea battles and sieges, corruption in high places and a yearning for reform, satire and humor, sorcery and demonology, and lust and sadism on the stage. Here are proud cardinals, beggars, feminists, university scholars, grocers, bankers, mercenaries, mystics, lawyers and tax collectors, and, dominating all, the knight in his valor and "furious follies," a "terrible worm in an iron cocoon."
Tuchman's history of the latter half of the fourteenth century features Enguerrand de Coucy VII, a French noble who survived wars, crusades, plagues, and all manner of religious, civil, and social strife. Nadia May renders interesting even Tuchman's most pedantic moments of scene-setting and listing of people, supplies, deaths, etc. De Coucy, at 15, takes control of one of France's largest estates following the death of his parents and even marries into the English royal family. May's reading, with impeccable French and English accents, immerses the reader in the lengthy narrative, mixing the political with the personal. Humorous asides, especially commentary from peasantry, and a wry tone, especially in the accounts of both heroic and ordinary women, enliven the telling. D.P.D. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine
—New York Review of Books...
“Beautifully written, careful, and thorough in its scholarship….What Ms. Tuchman does superbly is to tell how it was….No one has ever done this better.”
—Wall Street Journal...
“Barbara Tuchman at the top of her powers….A beautiful, extraordinary book….She has done nothing finer.”
About the Author
BARBARA W. TUCHMAN (1912-1989), American historian, was born in New York City and graduated from Radcliffe College in 1933. She won the Pulitzer Prize for history twice, for The Guns of August (1962), and Stilwell and the American Experience in China (1971).
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