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The History of the World #2
The History of the Medieval World 1st (first) edition Text Only
From the schism between Rome and Constantinople to the rise of the T'ang Dynasty, from the birth of Muhammad to the crowning of Charlemagne, this erudite book tells the fascinating, often violent story of kings, generals, and the peoples they ruled. In her earlier work, The History of the Ancient World , Susan Wise Bauer wrote of the rise of kingship based on might. But in the years between the fourth and the twelfth centuries, rulers had to find new justification for their power, and they turned to divine truth or grace to justify political and military action. Right thus replaces might as the engine of empire. Not just Christianity and Islam but the religions of the Persians and the Germans, and even Buddhism, are pressed into the service of the state. This phenomenon—stretching from the Americas all the way to Japan—changes religion, but it also changes the state.
Hardcover
First published February 22, 2010
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About the author
Susan Wise Bauer
154 books1,089 followersSusan Wise Bauer is an American author, English instructor of writing and American literature at The College of William and Mary, and founder of Well-Trained Mind Press (formerly Peace Hill Press).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 355 reviews
March 16, 2017
Between about 300 and about 1100, no one died a natural death.
You died of the plague, were killed in honest battle, or, if you were in any way connected to, or aspiring to, a ruler’s family, you were strangled, poisoned, stabbed, drowned, or otherwise disposed of, sooner or later. By your father, mother, brother, son, nephew, wife, general, regent, or other close connection.
Do unto others before they do unto you.
This is a close packed political history. It covers Europe, Asia and north Africa. There are very brief mentions of the Americas, and none of sub-Saharan Africa or Australia, as the author has chosen not to try to infer too much about areas without extensive documentation. It doesn’t address social or technological history. Basically, it is an endless: ‘and then Constantine went to battle against the Bulgarians, while on the east of the empire the ____ were gathering strength. Before he could address this new challenge, his ____ poisoned him and the second son that succeeded him was too busy carousing to pay any attention.’
It would be an fine reference work for anyone who needs political context information about a particular reign or alliance during the Middle Ages. It is more comprehensive than many histories, as you can get a picture of what was happening on all sides of any given 'country.’ Equal time is given to China, India, Korea and Japan as to the Byzantines, Central Asia, North Africa and Europe.
As an end to end read, it is numbing but convincing; we really are better off.
You died of the plague, were killed in honest battle, or, if you were in any way connected to, or aspiring to, a ruler’s family, you were strangled, poisoned, stabbed, drowned, or otherwise disposed of, sooner or later. By your father, mother, brother, son, nephew, wife, general, regent, or other close connection.
Do unto others before they do unto you.
This is a close packed political history. It covers Europe, Asia and north Africa. There are very brief mentions of the Americas, and none of sub-Saharan Africa or Australia, as the author has chosen not to try to infer too much about areas without extensive documentation. It doesn’t address social or technological history. Basically, it is an endless: ‘and then Constantine went to battle against the Bulgarians, while on the east of the empire the ____ were gathering strength. Before he could address this new challenge, his ____ poisoned him and the second son that succeeded him was too busy carousing to pay any attention.’
It would be an fine reference work for anyone who needs political context information about a particular reign or alliance during the Middle Ages. It is more comprehensive than many histories, as you can get a picture of what was happening on all sides of any given 'country.’ Equal time is given to China, India, Korea and Japan as to the Byzantines, Central Asia, North Africa and Europe.
As an end to end read, it is numbing but convincing; we really are better off.
May 20, 2010
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com:]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)
It seems sometimes that the older I get, and the more collective information that gets filed into my grey matter, the more eager I am to go farther and farther back in history in my studies, to better understand the things that led to what I already know: when I was an undergraduate, for example, I concentrated almost exclusively on the 20th century, while in my thirties I got interested in the Victorian Age for the first time, while here in my early forties I find myself fascinated with the Renaissance and Enlightenment in a way I never have been before. I suppose it's inevitable, then, that soon I will find myself gravitating more and more towards what is alternately known as the Middle Ages, the Dark Ages or the Medieval Period, although for me just the mention of the subject is enough to intimidate me into stymied apoplexy; because for those who don't know, we're talking about a roughly thousand-year period of history (from approximately 500 AD, the fall of the traditional Roman Empire, to 1500 AD, the birth of modern science), a period precisely known for its relative lack of written records, when an endless amount of profound societal upheaval eventually changed the very structure of humanity itself, from a series of tribe-based warrior kingdoms to a complicated patchwork of nation-states based on rule of law, and which spawned what is today the planet's two largest religions, Christianity and Islam. So where do you even start when it comes to such an open-ended discussion? The splitting of the Roman Empire into Western and Eastern halves? The collapse of the former, and the morphing of the latter into Byzantium (now known as Greek Orthodoxy)? The settling of the northern barbarians into what's now known as the countries of Europe? The rise of Catholicism? The formation of the sham-like yet highly important Holy Roman Empire? And what about...you know, the other half of the known freaking world in those same years, the Easterners who flip-flopped over a millennium between Persian Zoroastrianism and Arabic Islam, between far Asian Confucism and even farther Asian Buddhism? And who had their own barbarians, who also eventually settled to form the nations of Central Asia? All of which has tended to be tidily ignored altogether by Western history textbooks, making the modern challenge to understand the Middle Ages even twice as intimidating as it was before?
So thank God, then, for historian Susan Wise Bauer's new The History of the Medieval World, part two of a coming trilogy which attempts to look at every major trend guiding humanity from the dawn of civilization to the Renaissance, this particular volume spanning in a neat 650 pages from the Christian conversion of the Roman emperor Constantine (at around 400 AD) to the first Crusade between Christians and Muslims, around the year 1000. (I assume, then, that volume three will cover the years 1000 to 1500; and yes, volume one of this trilogy, which covers the Sumarians up to the fall of pagan Rome, is also currently in my reading list.) And that's because Bauer has written an incredibly tight, entertaining guide to these years, one that moves quickly while still being informative; and in the meanwhile, as befitting our global times, this is a truly planet-spanning look at the first half of the Middle Ages, one which not only spends as much time looking at the formation of modern Russia, Korea, Japan, China, India and the Middle East, but even spends some time in the barely known Americas of those years, and presents us with what little we now know about those pre-literate societies. It's the perfect guide for a newbie like me, one that lays out all the major sweeping events that define this age, in a way that is thorough but never overwhelming.
Because that's really the first thing you learn about the Middle Ages when you start studying it, of just what an overwhelming amount of things happened during it, which is why the old term "Dark Ages" for this period has been rapidly falling out of favor in the last century; that after all was an invention of the rationality-loving Enlightenment scholars who were the first to start academically studying the age, who meant for the term to be a deliberately derogatory reference to the fact that religion had such a heavy role in holding things together in those years, and that the territories of that age were made sovereign mostly through sheer violence and an uneducated fear of God's wrath. But as Bauer shows us, humanity in general actually made the same slow progression forward in the Middle Ages as it has in all other periods of history; just take the transformation of Europe's barbarians, for example, into the modern nations of England, France, Germany and others, the way they changed over 500 years from nomadic warrior tribes to truly civilized farmers and merchants, even if their first leaders did initially rule through fear and superstition, and by doing things like making wine chalices out of their enemies' skulls (a more common occurrence during the Middle Ages than you might imagine). There may have been no senates or judges of ancient Greece and Rome, Bauer argues, but the general progression of humanity during the Medieval Period was upwards anyway, and it's high time that we reassess what the long-term benefits were of this age in general.
But that said, what is easily more fascinating is watching the tidelike waves of influence that wash over various geographical areas over the course of 500 years, as first one school of thought then another gently fall in and out of favor, helped in this case by hundreds of no-frills maps that accompany this book's text, and which could be compiled into a cool little animated flipbook if one wanted; the way the Western Roman Empire shrinks to almost nothing, for example, over the course of a mere few hundred years, the way the Arabic Islamic Empire swells like a fever from nothing to nearly spanning the planet in just as short a period, only to break apart and eventually start dissolving on the edges just like the Romans did, when it too got too big to effectively manage. But along those same lines, it's equally as fascinating to focus in on the handful of unchanging "hot spot" cities of those years, the ones whose fates Bauer keeps returning to again and again, who manage to become beacons of stability within a world of chaos; the way that Rome holds off attack after attack even as the rest of its empire falls, the way that London thrives no matter who is controlling it in any given year, or especially the truly amazing Constantinople, which I now realize is perhaps the most successfully defended city in all of human history, and which remained an unchanging stalwart of Christianity for far longer than it had any reasonable right to expect (that is, until finally being conquered by the Islamic Empire for good, which is when it was renamed Istanbul, and is why the Greek Orthodox Church is ironically headquartered in the modern Muslim country of Turkey...but these were all developments during the Crusades, so not subject to purview in this particular book).
But perhaps most fascinating of all are the million "what if" questions that arise while studying such a world-changing period of history as this, of pondering all the ways that our modern world would be so profoundly different if only this highly contested war had ended in a different way, or if that much-hated emperor hadn't been assassinated on the eve of a major new offensive. What if the Roman Empire had never broken into halves in the first place, which after all was merely the result of a particular emperor loving his competing sons just a little too much, and figuring that he could avoid a family war by assigning different parts of his realm to them all? (Spoiler alert -- it didn't work.) What if the barbarian Visigoths had managed to maintain control of Spain, instead of eventually falling to invading African Muslims like they did? What if the resulting lack of threat never convinced Charlemagne to conquer all his tribal neighbors and create for the first time a unified France? What if India hadn't spent this entire period in an unending 500-year civil war between dozens of equally matched little fiefdoms (or "rajas," as the Hindus called them)? This is one of the main reasons to study history in the first place, is to ponder these imponderables, to better understand what happened by picturing all the things that almost but never actually did; and Bauer does an impeccable job here at encouraging that, gearing most of her stories in terms of how close they were to not getting pulled off, of how what we think of as "history" is actually in a constant state of flux while first occurring, even as its general trajectory is fated to move ever forward, ever more complex.
This regularity really comforts me at times, to tell you the truth, which of course is another big reason to study history, to be reassured that in the long run, humanity really is getting better as a whole, even if its accomplishments must sometimes be tracked in terms of centuries; anytime I have another of my constant freakouts these days about the f-cking teabaggers or the f-cking oil companies or my f-cking neighbor who blares her f-cking stereo at three in the f-cking morning when she comes home f-cking wasted, reading a bit of a book like this reminds me of how unimportant these petty annoyances are in the grand scheme of things, that they too will quickly get swallowed by the tide of history and soon be forgotten. It's for all these reasons, then, that today The History of the Medieval World becomes the first book of 2010 to score a perfect ten here at CCLaP, and why I heartily recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about this surprisingly sophisticated millennium of history. It was a true delight to come across, a dense scholarly tome that reads like an airport thriller, and I'm now highly looking forward to tackling the previous volume of the series, as well as anticipating the third volume to come.
Out of 10: 10
It seems sometimes that the older I get, and the more collective information that gets filed into my grey matter, the more eager I am to go farther and farther back in history in my studies, to better understand the things that led to what I already know: when I was an undergraduate, for example, I concentrated almost exclusively on the 20th century, while in my thirties I got interested in the Victorian Age for the first time, while here in my early forties I find myself fascinated with the Renaissance and Enlightenment in a way I never have been before. I suppose it's inevitable, then, that soon I will find myself gravitating more and more towards what is alternately known as the Middle Ages, the Dark Ages or the Medieval Period, although for me just the mention of the subject is enough to intimidate me into stymied apoplexy; because for those who don't know, we're talking about a roughly thousand-year period of history (from approximately 500 AD, the fall of the traditional Roman Empire, to 1500 AD, the birth of modern science), a period precisely known for its relative lack of written records, when an endless amount of profound societal upheaval eventually changed the very structure of humanity itself, from a series of tribe-based warrior kingdoms to a complicated patchwork of nation-states based on rule of law, and which spawned what is today the planet's two largest religions, Christianity and Islam. So where do you even start when it comes to such an open-ended discussion? The splitting of the Roman Empire into Western and Eastern halves? The collapse of the former, and the morphing of the latter into Byzantium (now known as Greek Orthodoxy)? The settling of the northern barbarians into what's now known as the countries of Europe? The rise of Catholicism? The formation of the sham-like yet highly important Holy Roman Empire? And what about...you know, the other half of the known freaking world in those same years, the Easterners who flip-flopped over a millennium between Persian Zoroastrianism and Arabic Islam, between far Asian Confucism and even farther Asian Buddhism? And who had their own barbarians, who also eventually settled to form the nations of Central Asia? All of which has tended to be tidily ignored altogether by Western history textbooks, making the modern challenge to understand the Middle Ages even twice as intimidating as it was before?
So thank God, then, for historian Susan Wise Bauer's new The History of the Medieval World, part two of a coming trilogy which attempts to look at every major trend guiding humanity from the dawn of civilization to the Renaissance, this particular volume spanning in a neat 650 pages from the Christian conversion of the Roman emperor Constantine (at around 400 AD) to the first Crusade between Christians and Muslims, around the year 1000. (I assume, then, that volume three will cover the years 1000 to 1500; and yes, volume one of this trilogy, which covers the Sumarians up to the fall of pagan Rome, is also currently in my reading list.) And that's because Bauer has written an incredibly tight, entertaining guide to these years, one that moves quickly while still being informative; and in the meanwhile, as befitting our global times, this is a truly planet-spanning look at the first half of the Middle Ages, one which not only spends as much time looking at the formation of modern Russia, Korea, Japan, China, India and the Middle East, but even spends some time in the barely known Americas of those years, and presents us with what little we now know about those pre-literate societies. It's the perfect guide for a newbie like me, one that lays out all the major sweeping events that define this age, in a way that is thorough but never overwhelming.
Because that's really the first thing you learn about the Middle Ages when you start studying it, of just what an overwhelming amount of things happened during it, which is why the old term "Dark Ages" for this period has been rapidly falling out of favor in the last century; that after all was an invention of the rationality-loving Enlightenment scholars who were the first to start academically studying the age, who meant for the term to be a deliberately derogatory reference to the fact that religion had such a heavy role in holding things together in those years, and that the territories of that age were made sovereign mostly through sheer violence and an uneducated fear of God's wrath. But as Bauer shows us, humanity in general actually made the same slow progression forward in the Middle Ages as it has in all other periods of history; just take the transformation of Europe's barbarians, for example, into the modern nations of England, France, Germany and others, the way they changed over 500 years from nomadic warrior tribes to truly civilized farmers and merchants, even if their first leaders did initially rule through fear and superstition, and by doing things like making wine chalices out of their enemies' skulls (a more common occurrence during the Middle Ages than you might imagine). There may have been no senates or judges of ancient Greece and Rome, Bauer argues, but the general progression of humanity during the Medieval Period was upwards anyway, and it's high time that we reassess what the long-term benefits were of this age in general.
But that said, what is easily more fascinating is watching the tidelike waves of influence that wash over various geographical areas over the course of 500 years, as first one school of thought then another gently fall in and out of favor, helped in this case by hundreds of no-frills maps that accompany this book's text, and which could be compiled into a cool little animated flipbook if one wanted; the way the Western Roman Empire shrinks to almost nothing, for example, over the course of a mere few hundred years, the way the Arabic Islamic Empire swells like a fever from nothing to nearly spanning the planet in just as short a period, only to break apart and eventually start dissolving on the edges just like the Romans did, when it too got too big to effectively manage. But along those same lines, it's equally as fascinating to focus in on the handful of unchanging "hot spot" cities of those years, the ones whose fates Bauer keeps returning to again and again, who manage to become beacons of stability within a world of chaos; the way that Rome holds off attack after attack even as the rest of its empire falls, the way that London thrives no matter who is controlling it in any given year, or especially the truly amazing Constantinople, which I now realize is perhaps the most successfully defended city in all of human history, and which remained an unchanging stalwart of Christianity for far longer than it had any reasonable right to expect (that is, until finally being conquered by the Islamic Empire for good, which is when it was renamed Istanbul, and is why the Greek Orthodox Church is ironically headquartered in the modern Muslim country of Turkey...but these were all developments during the Crusades, so not subject to purview in this particular book).
But perhaps most fascinating of all are the million "what if" questions that arise while studying such a world-changing period of history as this, of pondering all the ways that our modern world would be so profoundly different if only this highly contested war had ended in a different way, or if that much-hated emperor hadn't been assassinated on the eve of a major new offensive. What if the Roman Empire had never broken into halves in the first place, which after all was merely the result of a particular emperor loving his competing sons just a little too much, and figuring that he could avoid a family war by assigning different parts of his realm to them all? (Spoiler alert -- it didn't work.) What if the barbarian Visigoths had managed to maintain control of Spain, instead of eventually falling to invading African Muslims like they did? What if the resulting lack of threat never convinced Charlemagne to conquer all his tribal neighbors and create for the first time a unified France? What if India hadn't spent this entire period in an unending 500-year civil war between dozens of equally matched little fiefdoms (or "rajas," as the Hindus called them)? This is one of the main reasons to study history in the first place, is to ponder these imponderables, to better understand what happened by picturing all the things that almost but never actually did; and Bauer does an impeccable job here at encouraging that, gearing most of her stories in terms of how close they were to not getting pulled off, of how what we think of as "history" is actually in a constant state of flux while first occurring, even as its general trajectory is fated to move ever forward, ever more complex.
This regularity really comforts me at times, to tell you the truth, which of course is another big reason to study history, to be reassured that in the long run, humanity really is getting better as a whole, even if its accomplishments must sometimes be tracked in terms of centuries; anytime I have another of my constant freakouts these days about the f-cking teabaggers or the f-cking oil companies or my f-cking neighbor who blares her f-cking stereo at three in the f-cking morning when she comes home f-cking wasted, reading a bit of a book like this reminds me of how unimportant these petty annoyances are in the grand scheme of things, that they too will quickly get swallowed by the tide of history and soon be forgotten. It's for all these reasons, then, that today The History of the Medieval World becomes the first book of 2010 to score a perfect ten here at CCLaP, and why I heartily recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about this surprisingly sophisticated millennium of history. It was a true delight to come across, a dense scholarly tome that reads like an airport thriller, and I'm now highly looking forward to tackling the previous volume of the series, as well as anticipating the third volume to come.
Out of 10: 10
May 1, 2015
Good book. It's been too long a week for me to write a detailed review, so I'm going to let my Commodore 64 do the writing. Here's the program:
Let's run it!
etc... (the GOTO10 means this program runs forever)
It all seems rather meaningless when taking the long view.
5 PRINT"REVIEW OF -THE HISTORY OF THE MEDIEVAL WORLD-"
10 PRINT"A MAN ";
20 IFRND(1)<.5GOTO40
30 PRINT"FAILS TO ENLARGE HIS KINGDOM, KILLING MANY.":GOTO90
40 PRINT"ENLARGES HIS KINGDOM, KILLING MANY."
50 IFRND(1)<.5GOTO90
60 PRINT"HE DIVIDES HIS KINGDOM AMONG HIS SONS."
70 PRINT"HE DIES."
80 PRINT"THE SONS KILL EACH OTHER OFF.":GOTO100
90 PRINT"HE DIES."
100 PRINT"SOON AFTER, ";:GOTO10
Let's run it!
REVIEW OF -THE HISTORY OF THE MEDIEVAL WORLD-
A MAN FAILS TO ENLARGE HIS KINGDOM, KILLING MANY.
HE DIES.
SOON AFTER A MAN ENLARGES HIS KINGDOM, KILLING MANY.
HE DIES.
SOON AFTER A MAN FAILS TO ENLARGE HIS KINGDOM, KILLING MANY.
HE DIES.
SOON AFTER A MAN ENLARGES HIS KINGDOM, KILLING MANY.
HE DIVIDES HIS KINGDOM AMONG HIS SONS.
HE DIES.
THE SONS KILL EACH OTHER OFF.
SOON AFTER A MAN FAILS TO ENLARGE HIS KINGDOM, KILLING MANY.
HE DIES.
SOON AFTER A MAN FAILS TO ENLARGE HIS KINGDOM, KILLING MANY.
HE DIES.
SOON AFTER A MAN ENLARGES HIS KINGDOM, KILLING MANY.
HE DIVIDES HIS KINGDOM AMONG HIS SONS.
HE DIES.
THE SONS KILL EACH OTHER OFF.
SOON AFTER A MAN ENLARGES HIS KINGDOM, KILLING MANY.
HE DIES.
etc... (the GOTO10 means this program runs forever)
It all seems rather meaningless when taking the long view.
March 8, 2010
This is the next book in Bauer's History of the World series, following The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome. I gave this 5 stars because I love history, and this is the best historical overview I have read.
Bauer's style is accessible and very readable. She presents her history in manageable small bites, with a chapter averaging 8-9 pages, including maps and a comparative time-line in each. For example, a chapter on the Byzantine empire may detail about 40 years, with following chapters on the rise of Islam, or China, or Korea, covering approximately the same period. In this way we see the civilizations of the world develop in concert, without being overwhelmed or bogged down with minutia. If one was so minded, you could read straight through the chapters on, say, India, and get a good feel for its continual development.
I highly recommend this series to anyone with an interest in the history and development of civilization.
Bauer's style is accessible and very readable. She presents her history in manageable small bites, with a chapter averaging 8-9 pages, including maps and a comparative time-line in each. For example, a chapter on the Byzantine empire may detail about 40 years, with following chapters on the rise of Islam, or China, or Korea, covering approximately the same period. In this way we see the civilizations of the world develop in concert, without being overwhelmed or bogged down with minutia. If one was so minded, you could read straight through the chapters on, say, India, and get a good feel for its continual development.
I highly recommend this series to anyone with an interest in the history and development of civilization.
December 23, 2016
How cool is this, i started to feel how different historical agents shaped the world we are having.
This is the second volume after Susan's Ancient History, new players appear on the world map compared to the first volume: Japan, Korea, Indonesia (very brief), Mesoamerica besides Europe, ME, India and China. Susan goes with the same format: chronological order and switching geography, she was able to put some significant names, places and events into my head such as the emergence of Charlemange, Kievan Rus, the shrinkage of Byzantine Empire.. Before this, i didn't know the origin of Cyrillic alphabet and its connection to the Byzantine and Greek letters or The French or German were in the same kingdom then split.
One question: The history of Korea part is an interesting but odd part. Why Susan put in there Korea but not Thailand, Champa Kingdom, or Viet Nam in southeast asia, or many great kingdoms in Africa...? Ofcourse she can not put everything in one book, but I suspect there are other incentives to put Korea in.
After finishing this book, i googled "Medival History lectures" and found some interesting websites such as http://www2.uncp.edu/home/rwb/lecture.... The lecture outlines the summaries and insightful interpretation of events. This aids to the overall understanding while the book helps with details.
It is helpful to see others' review where more indepth knowledge are shown in the critiques regarding Susan's presentation.
Update 24/12/2016: Third volume The History of the Renaissance will contain other geographical areas that i've mentioned above but the time will still be in Medival. For example, the emergence of African kingdoms, Southeast Asia, the breakaway of Viet Nam from China (Song Dynasty) will be in 3rd volume.
This is the second volume after Susan's Ancient History, new players appear on the world map compared to the first volume: Japan, Korea, Indonesia (very brief), Mesoamerica besides Europe, ME, India and China. Susan goes with the same format: chronological order and switching geography, she was able to put some significant names, places and events into my head such as the emergence of Charlemange, Kievan Rus, the shrinkage of Byzantine Empire.. Before this, i didn't know the origin of Cyrillic alphabet and its connection to the Byzantine and Greek letters or The French or German were in the same kingdom then split.
One question: The history of Korea part is an interesting but odd part. Why Susan put in there Korea but not Thailand, Champa Kingdom, or Viet Nam in southeast asia, or many great kingdoms in Africa...? Ofcourse she can not put everything in one book, but I suspect there are other incentives to put Korea in.
After finishing this book, i googled "Medival History lectures" and found some interesting websites such as http://www2.uncp.edu/home/rwb/lecture.... The lecture outlines the summaries and insightful interpretation of events. This aids to the overall understanding while the book helps with details.
It is helpful to see others' review where more indepth knowledge are shown in the critiques regarding Susan's presentation.
Update 24/12/2016: Third volume The History of the Renaissance will contain other geographical areas that i've mentioned above but the time will still be in Medival. For example, the emergence of African kingdoms, Southeast Asia, the breakaway of Viet Nam from China (Song Dynasty) will be in 3rd volume.
February 2, 2024
Just as enjoyable as the first. I appreciated the worldwide scope of the survey.
March 21, 2025
This is a very comprehensive story of the kings, emperors, caliphs, and popes in the Middle Ages. So much so, it feels more like a reference book than a story.
September 13, 2012
First off, this book is very large, as is the topic it covers. It is essentially an overview of the medieval period, from the last days of the Romans, for the main continents across the world – and it is truly fascinating and engrossing.
Amazingly, the author achieves their goal very well indeed. Each chapter deals with a different culture, moving forward slowly in time to indicate clearly the evolution of the period from each perspective. However, this is never overwhelming. The ‘story’ of each land/culture flows well (and often humorously), and never becomes dry or just a barrage of names or titles. Societies and influences are clear, and it’s easy to get an idea of what is happening, where and why.
As an overview of a very long period over a very wide area, it is excellent and (miraculously!) never unwieldy. There’s enough detail for readers who find appeal in a particular time or location to then look for further, more detailed accounts elsewhere.
An excellent text, recommended.
Amazingly, the author achieves their goal very well indeed. Each chapter deals with a different culture, moving forward slowly in time to indicate clearly the evolution of the period from each perspective. However, this is never overwhelming. The ‘story’ of each land/culture flows well (and often humorously), and never becomes dry or just a barrage of names or titles. Societies and influences are clear, and it’s easy to get an idea of what is happening, where and why.
As an overview of a very long period over a very wide area, it is excellent and (miraculously!) never unwieldy. There’s enough detail for readers who find appeal in a particular time or location to then look for further, more detailed accounts elsewhere.
An excellent text, recommended.
August 29, 2024
Susan Wise Bauer's masterful series on World History continues with this second installment.
It Starts in 312 CE with Constantine entering the gates of Rome and ends with 1129 CE with Pope urban issuing a call for Crusade (the First).
Bauer's story enfolds by year and each subsection is divided into concepts such as "Unity" where it looks at events that show the overarching theme. As history develops we see the various ways in which, even minor events, can have great resonance. Written in a manner that it can read like a novel, bauer;s prose never fails to interest and delight. With a good dose of source material quotes and detailed maps this is a great series for any person wishing for a solid foundation in World History. One of the best such series out there. Highly recommended.
It Starts in 312 CE with Constantine entering the gates of Rome and ends with 1129 CE with Pope urban issuing a call for Crusade (the First).
Bauer's story enfolds by year and each subsection is divided into concepts such as "Unity" where it looks at events that show the overarching theme. As history develops we see the various ways in which, even minor events, can have great resonance. Written in a manner that it can read like a novel, bauer;s prose never fails to interest and delight. With a good dose of source material quotes and detailed maps this is a great series for any person wishing for a solid foundation in World History. One of the best such series out there. Highly recommended.
April 9, 2024
3.5 stars. Good information, but I thought it was pretty dry. She takes the viewpoint that Constantine’s Christian motives were more pragmatic than spiritual.
Want to read
October 28, 2022*************************
*The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome TBR
*The History of the Medieval World: From the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade TBR
*The History of the Renaissance World: From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Conquest of Constantinople TBR
*The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome TBR
*The History of the Medieval World: From the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade TBR
*The History of the Renaissance World: From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Conquest of Constantinople TBR
March 1, 2018
This was a really good book chronicling about 800 years of European, Middle Eastern, and Asian history. Each chapter is about 6 pages, and each has a good map showing you which nations covered which areas.
I was amazed at the number of rulers that fell out of favor and ran off to monasteries, or in the case of women rulers, nunneries. Many that didn't rush off were blinded, however. This happened to many people over the centuries. The practice of drinking from the skull of a vanquished foe seemed to have fallen out of favor around 700-800, but people were still being blinded in Byzantium well into the 1000s.
This is definitely a history of the 'great people,' which not much attention given to common living and working conditions. It's a great read that will fill you in on a good span of the world's history in a short time, however.
I was amazed at the number of rulers that fell out of favor and ran off to monasteries, or in the case of women rulers, nunneries. Many that didn't rush off were blinded, however. This happened to many people over the centuries. The practice of drinking from the skull of a vanquished foe seemed to have fallen out of favor around 700-800, but people were still being blinded in Byzantium well into the 1000s.
This is definitely a history of the 'great people,' which not much attention given to common living and working conditions. It's a great read that will fill you in on a good span of the world's history in a short time, however.
January 31, 2019
I was very pleased that this truly is world history and not only the history of Europe (although there is a LOT about Europe and Christianity in Europe and adjacent geographic areas) . Bauer covers wars and kingdoms and dynasties and major technological or agricultural improvements in China, India, some Africa, and the Americas. Long, but excellently researched.
July 13, 2025
Solid overview of medieval history, focussing largely on Europe and parts of Asia, with occasional glimpses of other parts of the world. Covers a lot of interesting stuff, though I'd have liked to see the geographical scope broadened further.
August 30, 2018
This book was super long and super dense. I regretted a little bit that on my basic Kindle it wasn't so easy to read the maps or the timelines, but after a couple of hundred pages, I decided to be thankful I didn't have to lug around a Bible-sized tome everywhere I've gone for the past six weeks.
I am getting more and more interested in history as I get older, so I don't currently have much to compare it to, but Bauer's dry humor made reading this book such a pleasure.
Spoiler alert: Everybody dies, usually ironically quickly after making a bad decision (that usually resulted in the deaths of thousands of expendable commoners and soldiers). Also, women--and children--are so very literally property that it's hard to get your head around some time. Like Disney makes being a princess seem like a pretty good gig, whereas real princesses got handed out like party favors to seal deals between (usually incompetent) men. And like at least three times in this book, somebody used their enemy's empty skull for a wineglass.
If you're just going to read one chapter of this book, which would be odd, but, regardless, I would recommend chapter 80, The Arrival of the Turks (in Byzantine). It's the sloppiest series of hookups and breakups between elderly Byzantine nobles (and a few cute young ones, too). I feel like this is the behind the scenes stuff that I didn't get in high school.
Honestly, this book was better than any self-help book I've read. If all these ridiculous people (predominantly men) can get out there in front of giant armies they have no business leading, and these little boys can be sat on thrones because of who their daddies are. and all these bumblers can make decisions effecting thousand of people's lives just because they live in a bigger house than everyone else, then I can probably try my hand at watercolor painting without worrying about the consequences.
Very glad to have read this book and am looking forward to reading Susan Wise Bauer's other history books.
I am getting more and more interested in history as I get older, so I don't currently have much to compare it to, but Bauer's dry humor made reading this book such a pleasure.
Spoiler alert: Everybody dies, usually ironically quickly after making a bad decision (that usually resulted in the deaths of thousands of expendable commoners and soldiers). Also, women--and children--are so very literally property that it's hard to get your head around some time. Like Disney makes being a princess seem like a pretty good gig, whereas real princesses got handed out like party favors to seal deals between (usually incompetent) men. And like at least three times in this book, somebody used their enemy's empty skull for a wineglass.
If you're just going to read one chapter of this book, which would be odd, but, regardless, I would recommend chapter 80, The Arrival of the Turks (in Byzantine). It's the sloppiest series of hookups and breakups between elderly Byzantine nobles (and a few cute young ones, too). I feel like this is the behind the scenes stuff that I didn't get in high school.
Honestly, this book was better than any self-help book I've read. If all these ridiculous people (predominantly men) can get out there in front of giant armies they have no business leading, and these little boys can be sat on thrones because of who their daddies are. and all these bumblers can make decisions effecting thousand of people's lives just because they live in a bigger house than everyone else, then I can probably try my hand at watercolor painting without worrying about the consequences.
Very glad to have read this book and am looking forward to reading Susan Wise Bauer's other history books.
June 22, 2016
This is the second volume in the series and it's an absolutely fascinating period of history. For me, it was really hard to get through without it becoming depressing and weighing heavily on the mind. Across race, culture, gender, or religion, the core of human nature seems to be the same. From the beginning of time hatred, wars, atrocities, and the lust for power have been major themes of human existence. Reading this book was a constant stream of the same basic story played out by different people across the world. It appears that the answer to the question, "Can't we all just get along?" is a loud and resounding "NO!"
I'll read the last volume at some point, but I definitely need to go read some light fluff for a while before I delve back into people repeating the same mistakes over and over and over again, and the depressing reality that we have learned so very little.
I'll read the last volume at some point, but I definitely need to go read some light fluff for a while before I delve back into people repeating the same mistakes over and over and over again, and the depressing reality that we have learned so very little.
August 10, 2020
What I said in a lengthly review of the first book applies equally to this second installment, so rather than repeat that, I'll just provide a link to my review:
The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome
May 23, 2021
Uzun bir okuma oldu. Ara vererek ilerledim. Zaten böyle bir kitap bu şekilde ilerleyebiliyor. Yeri geliyor ön okuma yapmak gerekiyor. Ama büyük bir zevkle Susan Wise Bauer’in serisinin ikinci kitabını da bitirdim.
Özet çıkararak ilerlediğim bir kitap oldu. Tıpkı ilk kitap Antik Dünya gibi. Bu özetleri temize geçip, hem bir tekrarlamış oluyorum hem de elimde damıtılmış bir bilgi oluyor. Tabi bu tüm tarihin özeti gibi ya da herkesin hemen anlayabileceği gibi notlar değil.
Detaylı bir yazıyı kitapveyorum.com sayfasında yapacağım. Şimdi burada nereden başlayacağımı bilemiyorum. Kısaca değinecek olursam, antik dünyadan kaldığı yerden devam ediyor Susan Wise Bauer. Yine aynı şekilde batıda britanya, avrupa, doğuda asya, çin ve daha ilerisi japonya, kuzeyde isveç, norveç, greenland, güneyde ise kuzey afrika, hindistan ve arap yarımadasının tarihne değiniyor. Amerika kıtasında da bir kaç noktaya değiniyor ama sanıyorum buraya üçüncü ciltte detaylı girecek.
En son okuduğum kısım olduğu için, Türklerin tarih sahnesine çıkışı olan bölümleri oldukça objektif değerlendirmiş yazar. Aynı zamanda bizansın sorunlarını ele alışı, ruhani ve dünyevi liderlerin güçleri ile ilgili bölümler oldukça başarılıydı. Daha detaylı geçilebilirdi fakat bu kitabın konusundan çıkılırdı. Bunun için ekstra okumalar elbet yapılabilir. Ama dönüm noktalarını güzel hazırlamış diye düşünüyorum.
Kısaca derken yine uzuyor. Böylesi bir eserin biraz demlenmesi, üzerine düşünülmesi, alınan notların temize çekilmesi sonrası değerlendirilmesi çok daha doğru olur diyorum ve iyi okumalar diliyorum.
Özet çıkararak ilerlediğim bir kitap oldu. Tıpkı ilk kitap Antik Dünya gibi. Bu özetleri temize geçip, hem bir tekrarlamış oluyorum hem de elimde damıtılmış bir bilgi oluyor. Tabi bu tüm tarihin özeti gibi ya da herkesin hemen anlayabileceği gibi notlar değil.
Detaylı bir yazıyı kitapveyorum.com sayfasında yapacağım. Şimdi burada nereden başlayacağımı bilemiyorum. Kısaca değinecek olursam, antik dünyadan kaldığı yerden devam ediyor Susan Wise Bauer. Yine aynı şekilde batıda britanya, avrupa, doğuda asya, çin ve daha ilerisi japonya, kuzeyde isveç, norveç, greenland, güneyde ise kuzey afrika, hindistan ve arap yarımadasının tarihne değiniyor. Amerika kıtasında da bir kaç noktaya değiniyor ama sanıyorum buraya üçüncü ciltte detaylı girecek.
En son okuduğum kısım olduğu için, Türklerin tarih sahnesine çıkışı olan bölümleri oldukça objektif değerlendirmiş yazar. Aynı zamanda bizansın sorunlarını ele alışı, ruhani ve dünyevi liderlerin güçleri ile ilgili bölümler oldukça başarılıydı. Daha detaylı geçilebilirdi fakat bu kitabın konusundan çıkılırdı. Bunun için ekstra okumalar elbet yapılabilir. Ama dönüm noktalarını güzel hazırlamış diye düşünüyorum.
Kısaca derken yine uzuyor. Böylesi bir eserin biraz demlenmesi, üzerine düşünülmesi, alınan notların temize çekilmesi sonrası değerlendirilmesi çok daha doğru olur diyorum ve iyi okumalar diliyorum.
January 6, 2016
A fitting follow-up to her previous book, The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome, the author continues summarizing world history with enough detail to know what happened, but tersely enough to keep moving. I continue to appreciate her dry wit and commentary, such as noting that a crown was inherited by "Louis the Sluggard. The name, like Henry's [Henry the Quarrelsome], points to a difficult personality. Louis the Sluggard kept the throne for a single year before he died -- in all likelihood, poisoned by his own exasperated mother."
Central & South America, Europe and North Africa, the Middle East, India, and Asia (including extensive time on Korea) are all covered. Sections of time periods are divided into easily digested chapters, so although the book is large it's not hard to get through a chapter or two at a time. However, so much time is covered that many of history's notables show themselves to be repetitive. There's only so much poisoning, strangling, and revolts to seize the throne you can read before it starts to get boring. This is not so much a flaw in the writing as it is an aspect of history, and in some sense it makes the leaders in history that behave differently stand out even more.
I would recommend this book to anyone who can read a large book and has an interest in an overall sense of world history (after the first book in series, of course) and I look forward to the next installment.
Central & South America, Europe and North Africa, the Middle East, India, and Asia (including extensive time on Korea) are all covered. Sections of time periods are divided into easily digested chapters, so although the book is large it's not hard to get through a chapter or two at a time. However, so much time is covered that many of history's notables show themselves to be repetitive. There's only so much poisoning, strangling, and revolts to seize the throne you can read before it starts to get boring. This is not so much a flaw in the writing as it is an aspect of history, and in some sense it makes the leaders in history that behave differently stand out even more.
I would recommend this book to anyone who can read a large book and has an interest in an overall sense of world history (after the first book in series, of course) and I look forward to the next installment.
October 31, 2020
For a history book , this wasn't dry at all. I liked the way it went into what happened in a point in time but all throughout the world. Bauer give you the "bigger" picture of what and how the story unfolded
November 4, 2015
Actually I've given up, yet again. I make it about 1/3 of the way through and lose steam. I'd rather read historical fiction.
November 1, 2022
Rounded up from 3.5. A nice reference for the era-I liked how it was arranged because it put different countries and regions in proximity to each other when I tend not to think of them that way (ex what was going on in China while the Franks were around, etc). Nice dry humor to it too. One thing bothered me to the extent I need to remark on it-the author used a hockey metaphor referring to halftime. There are intermissions, no half time. I don’t know how this inaccuracy was left in but it took me out of the narrative and made me wonder what else may have been overlooked in the editing process.
March 17, 2025
Power is fragile; the rulers of long ago knew this just as those today do, and they will do anything to gain/ retain it. This will never change. Does this make me feel any better about regimes today? Not really but it does give context! lmao
June 26, 2020
I enjoyed this much better than Bauer's History of the Ancient World. This book is massive and covers a lot of material. Because it is so expansive it is difficult to dive into too much detail about many of the characters, but does provide a decent overview of the stories mentioned. A great resource for this period of history.
June 26, 2017
What a great book. I think I'll read it during every election cycle from now on. Fortunately, I still have Bauer's History of the Renaissance World to get me a little further through the current election.
Here's what's so soothing: hundreds of years of assassinations, warfare, and suffering, reported in a lively detached way, kind of like a Viking chronicle, but with much more personality. Things are much better now! In every possible way!
Our brains are programmed to focus on threats; this was an important adaptation that allowed us to not be wiped out by bears and things. But it's also wired us to have a consistently negative view of the times in which we live. The only antidote is history, especially one as wide-ranging (both geographically and chronologically) as this one.
The History of the Medieval World is just that: a round-up of major world events from the 300s to the 1100s. I was worried that it would be highly focused on the Christian and Muslim world, but China and India got plenty of page time, and the Americas even put in a few appearances. (Sub-Saharan Africa and Oceania were nowhere to be found.) Because of this, the narrative marches along and there's not a lot of dwelling on things. We get very little in the way of normal people's lives, science, or art, but lots of politics, war, and religion. And there were definitely some real characters in the mix. As much as the world totally sucked back then, there were occasional blips of badassery: The Empress Wu of China; the Empress Zoe of Constantinople; Muhammed; the Peace and the Truce of God in Western Europe; and a couple Arab kings who converted their people to Judaism because Islam and Christianity just seemed too damned fraught.
Even though history was always my favorite from, like, second grade on, and even though I achieved a double major in history mostly by accident, I knew next to nothing about medieval history coming into this. I had never learned about the Fall of Rome or the Rise of Constantinople before. The only episode in this entire book that I knew well was the Norman Conquest, and only because it's one of my favorite Wikipedia articles.
I've been amused to see other reviewers knock stars off for a single error of fact on page 234, or whatever. Lol. There are THOUSANDS OF FACTS IN THIS BOOK. Errors are inevitable, and easily corrected in future editions. What this book gets right is its tone and subject matter. I wanted a sweeping overview, not a deep-dive, and that's what this is.
10/10, would read again.
Here's what's so soothing: hundreds of years of assassinations, warfare, and suffering, reported in a lively detached way, kind of like a Viking chronicle, but with much more personality. Things are much better now! In every possible way!
Our brains are programmed to focus on threats; this was an important adaptation that allowed us to not be wiped out by bears and things. But it's also wired us to have a consistently negative view of the times in which we live. The only antidote is history, especially one as wide-ranging (both geographically and chronologically) as this one.
The History of the Medieval World is just that: a round-up of major world events from the 300s to the 1100s. I was worried that it would be highly focused on the Christian and Muslim world, but China and India got plenty of page time, and the Americas even put in a few appearances. (Sub-Saharan Africa and Oceania were nowhere to be found.) Because of this, the narrative marches along and there's not a lot of dwelling on things. We get very little in the way of normal people's lives, science, or art, but lots of politics, war, and religion. And there were definitely some real characters in the mix. As much as the world totally sucked back then, there were occasional blips of badassery: The Empress Wu of China; the Empress Zoe of Constantinople; Muhammed; the Peace and the Truce of God in Western Europe; and a couple Arab kings who converted their people to Judaism because Islam and Christianity just seemed too damned fraught.
Even though history was always my favorite from, like, second grade on, and even though I achieved a double major in history mostly by accident, I knew next to nothing about medieval history coming into this. I had never learned about the Fall of Rome or the Rise of Constantinople before. The only episode in this entire book that I knew well was the Norman Conquest, and only because it's one of my favorite Wikipedia articles.
I've been amused to see other reviewers knock stars off for a single error of fact on page 234, or whatever. Lol. There are THOUSANDS OF FACTS IN THIS BOOK. Errors are inevitable, and easily corrected in future editions. What this book gets right is its tone and subject matter. I wanted a sweeping overview, not a deep-dive, and that's what this is.
10/10, would read again.
May 29, 2017
There is a whole lot of 'one darn thing after another' in the telling of this story. Even the author herself would probably not be able to answer all the questions from a multiple choice test based on this book. At times, it did get overwhelming with all the names and places and dates which are presented in this story.
The narrative for weaving the story together coherently at times seemed to be missing. The particular sometimes needs a glue in order for the bigger, universal story to be understood. It's possible to look at and study every turtle in the known universe, but still not understand what turtle being really means.
I felt the book excelled at early Christian church history and what the nature of the trinity meant, the different ways of understanding the divinity of Christ, and the development of the orthodox Western Church and the Eastern Church. All early Christian 'isms' such as Nestorianism, Manicheism, Arianism, and so on usually confuse me, but she would repeat the definition as they came up in the story telling thus allowing me to follow the esoteric fine points. The author also would emphasis the importance of identity in order for a group of people to become greater than the sum of its parts thus allowing for a cohesive system of some kind transcending what was previously there beforehand.
I thought a slightly better book on this topic was Will Durant's Volume IV of "The Story of Civilization: The Age of Faith". He has a narrative that tied the story together, and he also looked at the development of thought in addition to the political events that were covered in this book, and he presented most of the same facts (at least in Europe), but I never felt overwhelmed by his story telling as I sometimes would with this book because he knows that history needs a narrative in order to be understood.
The narrative for weaving the story together coherently at times seemed to be missing. The particular sometimes needs a glue in order for the bigger, universal story to be understood. It's possible to look at and study every turtle in the known universe, but still not understand what turtle being really means.
I felt the book excelled at early Christian church history and what the nature of the trinity meant, the different ways of understanding the divinity of Christ, and the development of the orthodox Western Church and the Eastern Church. All early Christian 'isms' such as Nestorianism, Manicheism, Arianism, and so on usually confuse me, but she would repeat the definition as they came up in the story telling thus allowing me to follow the esoteric fine points. The author also would emphasis the importance of identity in order for a group of people to become greater than the sum of its parts thus allowing for a cohesive system of some kind transcending what was previously there beforehand.
I thought a slightly better book on this topic was Will Durant's Volume IV of "The Story of Civilization: The Age of Faith". He has a narrative that tied the story together, and he also looked at the development of thought in addition to the political events that were covered in this book, and he presented most of the same facts (at least in Europe), but I never felt overwhelmed by his story telling as I sometimes would with this book because he knows that history needs a narrative in order to be understood.
December 10, 2022
I have to give this book 4 stars. There is no choice. Susan Wise Bauer tackles Europe, Asia, North Africa, and even a bit of the Americas as she spans the years 312 - 1129. Yep, you read that right. Wise Butler tackled almost a millennia in her 666 paged book (and yes, I did chuckle at that number, especially since Christianity has a starring role within these pages).
Unfortunately, because she is spanning such an insane time frame, and because record keeping wasn't exactly a priority when folks were getting pillaged and burned down all the time, there isn't much depth to these pages. I kind of felt like an alien, circling Earth, watching as the decades melt by, with kingdoms rising and falling in a blink of an eye. Not many of the names in this text stick, because they're only on the scene for a few pages, if that. I did appreciate Wise Butler's lens into the women who tried to seize power, but would have loved her to have actually cracked that open and looked deeply. I loved the vignette about Leif Erikson, but that's all we could really call it, because it only lasted ~4 pages.
Yes, I'll admit, I skimmed at times, especially sections that were particularly "King Man ruled but then got murdered, his murderer took the throne but then his wife's lover pushed him off it. Loverboy ruled but was poisoned..." and on and on. It did get a bit tedious to read. That said, it's an incredible feat to have written this book and at the slim page count relative to the time frame it tackles. I'm not quite sure what I wanted from this book now that I'm out of it. I think I had hoped for an in-depth view of the social and political landscape of civilization, but I can't say that the source material exists for a book like that to even get published. So, yes, this book gets 4 stars, but it can get dry as hell. You've been warned.
Unfortunately, because she is spanning such an insane time frame, and because record keeping wasn't exactly a priority when folks were getting pillaged and burned down all the time, there isn't much depth to these pages. I kind of felt like an alien, circling Earth, watching as the decades melt by, with kingdoms rising and falling in a blink of an eye. Not many of the names in this text stick, because they're only on the scene for a few pages, if that. I did appreciate Wise Butler's lens into the women who tried to seize power, but would have loved her to have actually cracked that open and looked deeply. I loved the vignette about Leif Erikson, but that's all we could really call it, because it only lasted ~4 pages.
Yes, I'll admit, I skimmed at times, especially sections that were particularly "King Man ruled but then got murdered, his murderer took the throne but then his wife's lover pushed him off it. Loverboy ruled but was poisoned..." and on and on. It did get a bit tedious to read. That said, it's an incredible feat to have written this book and at the slim page count relative to the time frame it tackles. I'm not quite sure what I wanted from this book now that I'm out of it. I think I had hoped for an in-depth view of the social and political landscape of civilization, but I can't say that the source material exists for a book like that to even get published. So, yes, this book gets 4 stars, but it can get dry as hell. You've been warned.
July 5, 2019
This book covers 800 years in an extraordinarily erratic story. North America is not covered at all hardly because there was no recorded history. South America is similarly neglected. And the source of information for the rest of the world is not very well described.
Please be advised that the only thing that happened in the world during this entire period was war and murder and efforts to expand territory. This is truly a historian who believes that if you cover the wars you have covered the history!
If I was not listening to the Audible book I can assure you I would never have finished this book. There are thousands of names mentioned that I have never heard of! Many of them lived very short lives and were apparently not very nice people. Not very many nice people made it into this history.
I am not sure why anyone would write or read this book.
Please be advised that the only thing that happened in the world during this entire period was war and murder and efforts to expand territory. This is truly a historian who believes that if you cover the wars you have covered the history!
If I was not listening to the Audible book I can assure you I would never have finished this book. There are thousands of names mentioned that I have never heard of! Many of them lived very short lives and were apparently not very nice people. Not very many nice people made it into this history.
I am not sure why anyone would write or read this book.
January 27, 2018
I don't usually buy books anymore since my house is filled with them but I think I'm going to end up purchasing this one. It is a perfect cliff note history of the world for the time period. It gives you just enough detail to get you the information and enough to look up more information on the topics that intrigue you. That with the fact that it gives you information on whats going on in the whole world and not just one section makes it a perfect companion history book. I like that each chapter is a different section of the world and I really like the chart after each that shows what is happening in the other parts of the world during that period of time.
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