A distant mirror the calamitous 14th century by Barbara w. Tuckman

Considering the bad times we are in now in this country politically and worldwide with climate change i wanted to find something that might be as bad or even worse to cheer me up that it could be worse.Tuckman's bookShows that there was something worseProbably far worth worse although the planet itself wasn'tthreatenedIt is now by global climate change The 14th century gives us back two contradictory images on the one hand a glittering time of crusades castles cathedrals chivalryan exquisitely illuminated books of cathedrals and chivalry on the other, a time of ferocity and spiritual agony a world plunged into chaos these are the years when the black deaths struck in the great plague killing more than a third of the pop entire population between India and Iceland, and returned four times during the rest of the century when free booting companies of Briggans terrorized Europe with impunityLike The Vikingsand & ...... When a hundred years of war seem to have no beginning and noend7fine belligerent pho&e efforts to end it acquired a life of its own when chivalry Defined the ideal that it formed a nurtured nobility was crlumbling under the impact of new weapons, new tactic .When a wave of peasant and proletarian revolts sept through Europe, evoking panic from fierce repressions by the ruling class....papa schism the rent the Christian wol tells it all at every levelrFrom family life to see battles and d Mrs Tuckman gives With only one political party actually having solutions to our problems and the other. It makes no difference which political party wins if there is only one which has all power that is the road to dictatorship regardless of which party wins if there is no agreement on truth we are doomedWinston Churchill saidThat democracy is the worst form of governmentexcept for all the restThis book isa clue as to how bad things could getAnd they were horrendousWe're not there yetBut we could be