If you haven't already read Wendy B's post on Barbara Tuchman's "A Distant Mirror - The Calamitous 14th Century" you need to read it now.It's become de rigueur for newspaper columnists, bloggers and people standing around the water cooler to bemoan the decline of civilization as evidenced by what one historian called "economic chaos, social unrest, high prices, profiteering, depraved morals, lack of production, industrial indolence, frenetic gaiety, wild expenditure, luxury, debauchery, social and religious hysteria, greed, avarice, maladministration, decay of manners."
If you're feeling panicky over the state of the world, A Distant Mirror is my prescription for what ails you.
Tuchman, writing in 1978, says, "If our last decade or two of collapsing assumptions has been a period of unusual discomfort, it is reassuring to know that the human species has lived through worse before."
As they say...read the whole thing.
And, what I want to know is where is Wendy's instalaunch?
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6 comments:
"depraved morals, lack of production, frenetic gaiety, wild expenditure, luxury, debauchery, decay of manners."...sounds like my evening last night!
Jill, brilliant!
Jill, then why don't you invite me out more often?
Belle, thank you so much...but now I feel pressure to write the 2nd part of the post for next Thursday. Yikes! That's like actual work or something.
Oh Wendy...work...it's bitch isn't it!
Wendy is excellent not only with jewelry, fashion, red lips, hair, shoes, bags, dogs, people, and blogs, but with the turn of a phrase.
Unlike me, Wendy can definitely write...I can't even comment on my own blog without a typo. -note comment above-
(Maybe in college I should have majored in a subject that actually required a minimal amount of writing...)
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