This book is great. A brick of a text, but great. Quite simply, it is over 500 pages on the life history of a French lord who lived in the 13th century. The remains of his castle are still around, although much decimated by time and WWI, and really, there is not a lot of direct evidence of how he lived his life (such as a personal diary, or his wardrobe, etc.). Tuchman crafts his like out bits and pieces of history, place, and literature and for the jigsaw-life nature of her studies, it is a remarkably insightful book.
Tuchman's study and analysis are of course impeccible — her stellar reputation as a historian continues unabated and with reason — but she is also a writer who can craft a story in a personal and engaging way. I think her ability as a storyteller is often overlooked amidst the praises for her scholarly triumph. I first read this book when I was 13 and have read it again several times since. History interests me inordinately anyway, but what draws me to the book is how Tuchman creates a world that is very accesible and understandable. Her choice of title, A Distant Mirror, signifies what she was trying to accomplish and what, in my mind, she succeeded in doing: making the reader realize that people are always people, no matter the century or the clothes or the church or the technology. The 13th Century she shows us is incredibly different in texture and sensations but is wholly a human era that, language aside, most modern people would quickly feel at home in. History is about circumstances and battles and politics and old buildings; but it was lived by people no different from you or I. That was revelatory to me when I first read the book, and has become a comfort to me as I age.
