Review Of Barbara W. Tuchman's A Distant Mirror

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“A Distant Mirror” was written by Barbara W. Tuchman. This book is nonfiction and could be used as a textbook. Tuchman was a scholar, writer, historian, journalist, and 2 time recipient of the Pulitzer Prize. She wrote first-hand as a French Nobleman. She also has written many works of history such as: “Bible and Sword”, “The Proud Tower”, “The Zimmerman Telegraph”, and many more. Tuchman’s targeted audience was young adults and older; students or those who want to learn. The author’s purpose of writing this book was to try to find out the effects and consequences of one of the worst and deadliest catastrophes ever recorded, the Black Death “The genesis of this book was a desire to find out what were the effects on society of the most lethal disaster of recorded history” (Tuchman Foreword). …show more content…

It covers the Black Death, the Hundred Years War, uprisings, the Great Schism, and much more. This book is also a very important contribution to knowledge of the 14th and 15th century, it gives important information easily and clearly. Fact and opinion are very distinguishable between each other; Tuchman does a very good job giving facts, which are easy to tell apart from opinions, and are accurate. She also gives extra information by including both sides of issues, instead of the usual one sided argument. This book is written in first and third person in an objective style. This style fits the subject very well because in history, facts are much more important than feelings. The book was written very well, but at some times it is hard to understand because it may be in a different languages, use obsolete words, or just use words that aren’t very well known. The book is fairly concise, but sometimes can get a bit lengthy. Overall, the book is fairly easy to understand. It is very fluid and

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