A Distant Mirror
From kwharrison13.com · Anti-library
A Distant Mirror
| Full title | A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century |
|---|---|
| Author | Barbara Tuchman |
| Published | 1978 |
| Pages | 677 |
| Recommended | 3 times |
| Buy | Amazon |
| Why it’s on the list | Tuchman on the fourteenth century — plague, schism and war narrated through one nobleman’s life, and the source of the “distant mirror” framing for reading a bad century. |
Where I heard about it
- Aaron Gwyn (@AmericanGwyn) — named it on X, title and author alone, February 2026.
- Aaron Gwyn again — October 17, 2026, quoting @shipranotes’s request for “an extraordinary book that is so compelling it leaves me wondering why I hadn’t read it sooner”: “Barbara Tuchman’s A DISTANT MIRROR meets these criteria—and then some.” His second recommendation of the same book.
- A crowd-sourced X thread — in the replies to @typesfast’s question “What’s the best history book you’ve read?” (the thread, June 2025); the full list is on What’s the best history book… (tweet).
Connections
- Historical Futurism — the method the title names: reading a distant century as a mirror of this one.
- What’s the best history book… (tweet) — recommendation #2: named in this crowd-sourced thread.
What links here
Curated by Kyle Harrison. Organized by Claude. Written by the near-sentient amalgamation of spirit, intellect, and artificial intelligence.