09-06-2009, 09:42 AM
I have rarely read a book based on reviews alone, but I made an exception for Chris Wickham’s new The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000.
The reviews have been rather amazing. Economist bibliophile Tyler Cowen of George Mason University called it one of the best history books he has ever read while the Telegraph said that “no review… can really do this book justice.”
I’m not going to get too exuberant with superlatives, but this really is an extraordinary book. To start, it might be helpful to know what it is not. It is not yet another narrative of emperors, kings and battles. (I suppose this is the Edward Gibbon method: “History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.”) The book is also not an exercise in teleology, so you won’t find any grand narrative theme of “the birth of modern Europe,” for instance. It tries to avoid hindsight.
The book does cover the big political events, such as the most important emperors and battles, of course. But it also covers such things as culture and belief. How did the economic systems function? What changed with the “fall” of Rome in the West? How did societies view public space and architecture? How did Christianity evolve in the East and West? Who were slaves or “unfree” and what was their life like? What does this say about belief systems? All of these questions, and more, are analysed.
I also want to say something briefly on how the book is written. In recent years it seems so many books are going the way of journalism, and trying to cut down sentences to the shortest and simplest forms. Wickham goes directly against this and believes his readers can handle a long compound sentence with lots of punctuation without getting confused or bored. I love his writing style. He also does away with footnotes to keep a nice clean structure to the work. This annoyed me at first until I became used to the notes and bibliography which are neatly listed by page in the back.
I generally like a book if I learn something new or have fun reading it. This one easily succeeds on both counts. I highly recommend it.
The reviews have been rather amazing. Economist bibliophile Tyler Cowen of George Mason University called it one of the best history books he has ever read while the Telegraph said that “no review… can really do this book justice.”
I’m not going to get too exuberant with superlatives, but this really is an extraordinary book. To start, it might be helpful to know what it is not. It is not yet another narrative of emperors, kings and battles. (I suppose this is the Edward Gibbon method: “History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.”) The book is also not an exercise in teleology, so you won’t find any grand narrative theme of “the birth of modern Europe,” for instance. It tries to avoid hindsight.
The book does cover the big political events, such as the most important emperors and battles, of course. But it also covers such things as culture and belief. How did the economic systems function? What changed with the “fall” of Rome in the West? How did societies view public space and architecture? How did Christianity evolve in the East and West? Who were slaves or “unfree” and what was their life like? What does this say about belief systems? All of these questions, and more, are analysed.
I also want to say something briefly on how the book is written. In recent years it seems so many books are going the way of journalism, and trying to cut down sentences to the shortest and simplest forms. Wickham goes directly against this and believes his readers can handle a long compound sentence with lots of punctuation without getting confused or bored. I love his writing style. He also does away with footnotes to keep a nice clean structure to the work. This annoyed me at first until I became used to the notes and bibliography which are neatly listed by page in the back.
I generally like a book if I learn something new or have fun reading it. This one easily succeeds on both counts. I highly recommend it.
David J. Cord
www.davidcord.com
www.davidcord.com
