The Book of Ancient Bastards, by Brian Thornton

[Adam]

Throughout history there have been people who achieved great things through means that weren't that nice, people who no matter their fame you probably wouldn't want to be in the same room as, people that were downright bastards. This is a list of 101 such characters from throughout history.

My pick for Something Old.

This looks to be an interesting book even if dedicating two paragraphs to each person hardly serves to give you a proper understanding of them. Should be a good way to find people worth researching elsewhere.

[Adam]

Finally up to the Romans I actually care about... sort of. First Triumvirate. It’s alright, but the Second is where the moneys at.

Some interesting people so far. I had no idea how interconnected the start of the Greek Saga was with so many different powers. Traditional teaching usually just starts with Marathon as though the Persians came out of nowhere just so Athens could fight, but there’s a whole narrative of people betraying each other, getting kicked out of places, getting help from elsewhere. So many different points of view leading up to the battle that even now, I’m still trying to piece it together.

The main downside of this book is that everything is so abridged that it barely covers any what made them interesting. Alcibiades is summed up as basically a backstabber who left Athens for their enemies, but that isn’t even one tenth of the crazy anarchy that guy was up to. He did so much more and is frankly one of the most interesting men in history, but not here. It’s disappointing.

[Adam]

Finally finished.

I am very disappointed with this. 101 bastards on tap and the last 30 are pretty much all tied to the English throne. And not even the interesting ones half the time. Out of the War of the Roses you choose Henry Tutor and all you say is he was cheap with money? Either he was the most boring player in the whole affair or his entry ignored anything that would have been interesting.

In this book, you can see the entire stupid reductive narrative of Western Society. A few Mesopotamian and Egyptian entries to qualify as ancient, a bunch of players mentioned in Herodotus and Thucydides for Greek history, a large number of Romans (mostly tied to Caesar), a token entry on the Byzantines, and then the rest are kings of Western Europe without looking back. It skips over Gengis Khan and Mehmed because they’re too foreign, in favour of listing a few more unimportant English kings. I would rather the last entry have been on Vlad Tepes than Henry VI (because his daughter reshaped England’s history).

This could have been great, even with its serious undercutting of entries, if the author had actually done research and picked 101 bastards that were actually worth talking about.