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JOSE'S 50 BOOKS READ IN 2015
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29.
by
Tom HollandFinish date: 8th July 2015
Genre: History
Rating: B
Review: Tom Holland makes a great, well-written and riveting account of the Roman Late Republic in this book and I loved his descriptions of daily life or Roman society, but he's often a bit simplist on the political level (I could say that, for instance, the reasons for the fall of Carthage and Corinth or the issue of the army's loyalty could be better explained) even if the basics of Rome's political workings are relatively well explained. I also didn't like the way how he summarily describes some points of early Roman History at the start or the way how he doesn't refer properly (only very shortly in a later chapter) to the reforms of Gaius Marius.
However, Holland made a great effort for writing this book and that becomes clear in the way how he presents excerpts of primary sources (you might not agree with all translations, but it was a fine effort nonetheless), footnotes and bibliography. That makes him worthy of some praise (at least from me) and I decided to reward him with this rating. I recommend this book to all lovers of Antiquity, namely of the Roman Republic, or those that would like to be introduced on the Roman world of the 1st century B.C.
30.
by
Sherry JonesFinish date: 8th July 2015
Genre: Historical fiction
Rating: D
Review: Usually I like books of historical fiction, but this isn't the case. It isn't because of the treatment given to Profet Muhammad (quite sensitive and shows a very humane side of that person), but instead because of the historical accuracy of the book, which is what I prefer in historical fiction. Many events are distorted and that has a huge impact ito the story. For instance, Aisha, who was born in 613 and is the protagonist of the story, lost her virginity to Muhammad when she was 9 or 10 years old (622-623), but Sherry Jones places it (perhaps to avoid modern shock) in 627 after the accusations of adultery against her and creates a whole story of fights for the dominance around the "hatun" position in the "harim" system, which existed only in Ottoman times. Now that I'm mentioning this, it really looks as if she's mixing the Arabia of the 7th century AD, the Ottoman Empire and modern Islamic societies in her depictions of the status of women in the times of Mahomet and that's revealed in her bibliography (many books are about modern Muslim women)
The literary quality is also relatively poor and the only redeeming features of this book are its treatment of Muhammad (although it always shocks some prudish people) and its bibliography.
31.
by
Nick LaneFinish date: 22nd July 2015
Genre: Science
Rating: A
Review: This book is a nice trip through many issues of Biology like the origin of life and the eukaryotic cells, the appearance of multicelular cells, the ways how energy is produced by the cells and the rise of sex, ageing and death in eukaryotic beings (just to say a few subjects), all from the perspective of small organelles called mitochondria.
It's a wonderful and well-written work that attempts to see all these issues from new perspectives and popularizes many theories like the hydrogen hypothesis. The author is very careful in his analyzis, his explanations are excellent (especially considering the fact the study of most of such themes is relatively recent in the History of science and their complexity), while his bibliography is surely a wonderland for those wanting to read more on the subject.
The work reviewed here surely refreshed my high school Biology and I learned many details from it like the use of proton-motive force in many bacterias to make materials get in or out of the cell instead of the use of ATP. It may be a bit "mitochondriacentric", nonetheless the author is very reasonable in his conclusions and I think reading this book is completely worth it despite the sensationalist (and somewhat crappy) title.
32.
by Nuno Campos Inácio (no photo)Finish date: 24th July 2015
Genre: Historical fiction
Rating: E+/D-
Review: What I certainly don't like in historical fiction is when either there are anachronisms or conspiracy theories or just pure pseudoscience are involved. That's the case of this book. Although the author seems to be widely read judging by the book's bibliography (assuming he read it?), he makes a few inaccuracies regarding the subject of his book. For instance, he calls the Northmen as "Vikings" and he insists there were some "Cunni" around and even that they came from Atlantis, when in fact they were an indigenous people of Algarve and Alentejo that was assimilated in the Roman period.
Although that was bad, the worst is the conspiracy theory Nuno Inácio appears to share with a friend that claims a whole array of nonsense, including that the real Christ was Saint James, Saint Paul had been the founder of Christianity by making the exchange identities and a parody of a pact between the Romans and the Jews for a new religion (?) and that he was buried at Silves (a city in Algarve) and that some families (including obviously the Merovingians and the family of the author's friend) descend from the real "Christ". What I hated most about it is that he desvirtuated the Mozarabic community of Silves and that was very unfair, since their beliefs were "mainstream" in Christian theology and very close to those of the medieval papacy save in the rite and other very small (mainly cultural) differences.
Regarding the theme of this book, this is half the depiction of the voyage of a contingent of the Third Crusade until its campaign in Portugal and half a travelogue of half-pseudo-historical Al-Gharb (the inventions of the author surely don't help in some cases, as referred above) by a Danish monk detached from the Crusader expedition. I didn't like this shift from the advertised center of the story - the conquest of Alvor in 1189 - and it just ruined it completely since he introduced some pseudosciences. I also think he put the material aims of many Crusaders too openly when he should have done so in a more subtle way.
The writing style isn't anything special and the travelogue wasn't very interesting from a descriptive point since the author didn't have that skill needed to captivate the average reader for most of the time, although Al-Andalus was a very interesting civilization.
33.
by
Leslie BrubakerFinish date: 24th July 2015
Genre: History
Rating: B+
Review: A very informative book that debunks very shortly the existence of "iconoclasm" in the medieval Roman Empire and puts the controversy of iconomachy under a much more enlightening point of view. Its format is a bit awkward and the book is very short, but Leslie Brubaker makes her point very clearly.
You are on a roll, Jose. Great progress and interesting reviews.
Thank you very much, Jill! It's so nice to have a feedback. Like in the case of artists, any feedback is better than none. :)
I always enjoy reading your reviews,Jose. Although we do not read books from the same era of history, it is interesting to learn about other times.(I am sorry that I don't have an accent mark on my keyboard to correctly type your name and I can't seem to get the code to work))
There's no problem, Jill! Your intentions are more than enough to me. :)
34.
by
Richard FletcherFinish date: 31st July 2015
Genre: History
Rating: B+
Review: This is a nice and informative book on bishop Diego Gelmírez and medieval Galicia. Although some detail on Galicia was lacking (namely the evolution of the region as a space from Roman Gallaecia) and some informations are outdated by more recent scholarship, Richard Fletcher was very witty in his observations and this work is a valuable source on medieval Galicia (with quite some breakthroughs by the timeit was written), besides being the only one available on Diego Gelmírez in English.
By the way, a legal ebook version is housed here: Saint James' Catapult
AUGUST35.
by
Maurice DruonFinish date: 3rd August 2015
Genre: Historical fiction
Rating: B
Review: This book contains the first two books of the Les Rois Maudits series, The Iron King and The Strangled Queen. Their author, Maurice Druon, made a good historical research despite being a bit fluffy at some points on the Templars (yet very far from Dan Brown's claims, fortunately) and, in my personal perspective, overrating Philip IV of France.
Having as the starting point the affair of the Tour de Nesle and the supposed (actually bogus, but inserted into the narrative to give some spice to the story), the reader is taken through a great travel to France and its society in the era of the last Capetians through the series (although the two books I read go only until 1315).The writing style is also good and very readable, but a bit too light for my literary tastes.
36.
by
Miguel RealFinish date: 4th August 2015
Genre: Social and political satire; fiction
Rating: C
Review: In this booklet a certain type of woman (and indeed much of the ruling class in the "West") is depicted: the calculist woman who feels nothing for most other people and just cares for power, besides being a sociologist who manipulates statistics to defend her (quite delusional) neoliberal ideologies. That portrayal is done in a very interesting way and it's as dry as the main character, since there isn't anything that makes us love or hate the calculistic woman; there's only the possibility of ignoring her altogether (if that is possible at all).
37.
by
Robert G. HoylandFinish date: 5th August 2015
Genre: History
Rating: A
Review: A very interesting and balanced account of the Arab conquests and the formation of the Islamic civlization as well as its early empires (of the Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties).
I loved Hoyland's contextualization of the Arab expansion within the developments of Late Antiquity, his reassessment of the importance of the rise of Islam to it and his approach to the formation of several features of Islamic civilization like the "sharia", the evolution of the concept of "jihad", its social structure and the development of Islam as a religion, which are very important both for the historiography of this period and modern debates on Islam (the latter is horribly skewed by far-right propaganda entering into History, especially in America and Europe after 9/11).
There might be a few imperfections (there was no Georgia in the 7th and 8th centuries, for instance, although I suspect the author used that name for familiarity), while the use of "and" gets sometimes annoying for me, but the scholarship in this book is invaluable and very well thought out.
Oh... It seems someone changed the main picture on Saramago's page and caused that bug to appear. :( Fortunately I have fixed this issue. :)
I don't see any excess of blank spaces now. (confused)
Mod
38.
by
Chris WickhamFinish date: 17th August 2015
Genre: History
Rating: B+
Review: Chris Wickham's "The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages" is a very good and witty survey of Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages that shatters many kinds of misconceptions on the period, even if I think it's at some points overrated. Let me also add that this "enlightening" of the period is exactly what in many ways was promised (and even required) from this work, yet I think there's a partially missing field, as we'll see.
In part I, Wickham exposes many features of Roman society and economy while also evaluating the impacts of the Christianization of the Empire and of its collapse in the western provinces in the 5th century. His exposition was very interesting, namely from the point of view of social and economic history, yet I think his revisionism of the late antique Roman Empire regarding its overall power goes a bit too far and there are a few "weaker" details, but perhaps the biggest issue is that it lacks an accompanying political/military perspective that might have been useful in analyzing the causes of the decline of the Roman Empire (these weren't covered enough in my opinion when these were mostly needed, or were a bit disregarded, namely in the case of the hugepost-Diocletianic bureaucracy).
In part II, the early medieval West from 550 to 750 is investigated and unraveled wonderfully before the reader, from the "shadowy" regions of Britain and Ireland to the Lombard and Visigothic kingdoms. I also loved his emphasis on the study of the peasantry "in opposition" to the aristocracy of all those medieval societies (namely the Frankish), when the book could have easily have become just a history of the elites and the church. I also loved his ponderation of the "continuity vs. transformation" problem. Yet I must say that the comparison between the late Visigothic kingdom and the late Merovingians, although it's true we can't see events teleologically (the greatest fault of much books and even some good scholarship around), ends up being unfair since the Visigoths were in a period of unusual relative political stability in the second half of the 7th century. Moreover, the Visigothic kingdom was also starting to disagregate by the late 7th century (the duchies are one of the greatest signs of this), with royal authority not being respected in practice in several regions, namely on the northern mountains.
Part III was probably the hardest to write for the author, since it dealt with areas almost completely out of his area of expertise (early and high medieval Italy), but he suceeds anyway in making a good introduction. He manages to make a nice, even if a bit stereotypical account of the medieval Roman Empire that suits just fine for a general survey and doesn't fall into the worst prejudices regarding this polity (he only shows some typical, old and baseless prejudices by "Byzantinists", but again, nothing that bad for an introduction). The Islamic world is treated a bit worse as Wickham just relies too much on later 9th century accounts which form the traditional narrative of the period, which has been challenged in the last decades by "Orientalists", so its value is a bit reduced, although it's decent as an introduction.
Part IV is one of the best and worst of the book, depending on the chapter. Carolingian Francia, England and post-Carolingian Latin Christendom are very well explored in the period between the years 750 and 1000 on both political, cultural, religious and socioeconomic histories, yet the chapters on "Outer Europe" should have been better explored. I'll return to this issue at the final paragraph, since my wider critique is general to the work.
Generally, this work has already a great scope and, considering it was written by a single man with a limited expertise (regional rather than continental, which would be practically impossible due to the impossibility of someone having a very deep knowledge of such vas a subject as late antique and early medieval Europe), it's a work of tremendous overall erudition and a monument of knowledge, that gives to the reader a very different picture from that promoted by popular culture. It also has the advantage of being written both as a potential university textbook and as a book of scientific divulgation,yet there are some flaws which I specified along the review that take one star, but I'll now develop my biggest objection to Wickham's effort. I hope that a Penguin History of Europe written by a great scholar (the author is clearly one) should try to leave the typical bias of writing mainly about western Europe (often accompanied by teleological history). While Chris Wickham powerfully manages to shatter the idea that western Europe, namely its northern and central regions, was destined to thrive and even rule the world during the much of the modern period, and manages to include the Mediterranean and the eastern polities in his narrative, still doesn't leave enough the old paradigm of looking mostly to western Europe, since eastern and northern Europe aren't adequately focused. There's just a single chapter on "Outer Europe" that tries to somehow compensate for it, but that isn't enough. Cultures like those of the Slavs, the Northmen (I refrain from the term "Viking"), the Huns, the Khazars,the Magyars, the Avars and also the peoples of pre-Frankish Germany (not in any chronological order, of course) should be much better covered given their overall interest to the History of the period and the fact they covered most of the continent. It's true that written records are much smaller for these regions if existent at all (often these records come from more sophisticated neighbours who wrote down biased accounts of them), yet a different kind of history, an archaeological, social and, when possible, religious one, should be written and I didn't see much effort at making it. I admit a single small chapter is already good for histories of this period, yet more is demanded of a brilliant work.
Four solid stars.
39.
by Raffaele D'Amato (no photo)Finish date: 20th August 2015
Genre: History
Rating: C
Review: This book can be useful and very disappointing at the same time. It gives a generally competent view of the Varangian Guard and its military and politic roles in the medieval Roman Empire, from bodyguards to anti-piracy forces and the crack forces of Roman field armies in the from the late 10th until the 12th/13th centuries, besides informing very well about the weapons and armour of these mercenaries. Yet there are 3 problems: Osprey's bad editorial job, a few horrible mistakes (possibly caused by the editing, but, despite one or two clues I gathered in that direction, I can't be sure) and the fact this book might be on the wrong series (it should be on the "Elite" series).
40.
by
Maria João Lopo de CarvalhoFinish date: 20th August 2015
Genre: Historical fiction
Rating: D
Review: Padeira de Aljubarrota could have been a wonderful romance by exploring the border between reality and myth in the person of Aljubarrota's baker (a likely mythological character supposedly responsible for the killing of Castilians in the aftermath of the battle of Aljubarrota in 1385). Instead what the readers get is, through a storytelling of lives of two main characters, Brites de Almeida (the baker) and Queen Beatriz of Castela (1373-1431?), the reestablishment of many historicalmyths regarding the Portuguese late 14th century.
Despite the book's "bibliography", Maria João Lopo de Carvalho just sticks acritically to many prejudices and misconceptions regarding the period depicted in the book coming from Fernão Lopes' series of chronicles. The queen Leonor Teles is depicted as a kind of an intriguing (it reminds me her description as "aleivosa" by the chronicler above) psycopath lustful for power, while her daughter Beatriz is presented as a rebel teenager arond 1382 (a pure literary invention) and as a victim of Portuguese determination for independence and patriotism. I must also refer the saintly character given to Nuno Álvares Pereira (really? He was a kingmaker and one of the persons who benefited the most from the sucession crisis in 1383-1385, becoming the second most powerful lord in the kingdom, only below King John of Portugal). Also her views on the battle of Aljubarrota would have been benefited if she had read more recent works on it, namely those by João Gouveia Monteiro.
Regarding the baker herself, the book is also a "big fail". The magical realism attempted by the author through the famous story of the "Dama Pé-de-Cabra"just didn't result and was very pale if compared with several masters of the genre like Saramago or García Márquez, failing to atract me. On the other hand, the author applied her readings of Mattoso and Marques' books and depicted some aspects of Poertuguese late medieval society, even if her depictions of how disabilities were seen in the Middle Ages are far from complete and some other flaws.
Concluding, I'm highly disappointed with this work of historical fiction and it isn't historically accurate at all, notwithstanding what some non-historians (like the famous politician Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa) claimed.
41.
by Susana Gómez Martínez (no photo)Finish date: 21st August 2015
Genre: History
Rating: C
Review: A nice catalogue of a wonderful exhibit I had the opportunity of seeing at the Medieval Journey at Santa Maria da Feira (quite a lovely, even if a bit commercialized, medieval fair). It illustrates very well certain features of Andalusi mentality and daily life based on symbols, marks and gestures found archaeologically and it's quite astonishing to see many pre-Islamic symbols being adapted in an Islamic setting.
It's just a pity this book is small and not very well organized (at least the place for footnotes and the choice between footnotes and endnotes should be more coherent). It's also a bit overpriced for its size. Ok, the subject is neither very well explored compared with the Christian realms nor is it so popularized, but putting a high price basically because it's about al-Andalus isn't fair.
42.
by
Anthony KaldellisFinish date: 30th August 2015
Genre: History
Rating: A
Review: A very good and comprehensive study on Hellenism in the medieval Roman Empire until the reconquest of Constantinople in 1261. It debunks all the mythology around a "Greekness of Byzantium" and clearly reestablishes the Roman identity of the so-called "Byzantines", thereby helping to repair the old historical distortions done due to the West's desire to sole inheritance of the Roman legacy and cultural prejudices, as Kaldellis rightly points out at the beginning of the book. It's a major reference if someone wants to understand topics like the Romanization of the Roman East, medieval Roman identity, Psellos, the rise of cultural Hellenism during the Third Sophistic and the reactions of the Roman elites to the Fourth Crusade and the rise of the "Latinokratia".
SEPTEMBER43.
by Ann Christys (no photo)Finish date: 5th September 2015
Genre: History
Rating: B
Review: A very good overview of Viking activity in Iberia and much of the Mediterranean (although it doesn't refer the Varangian Guard or Viking/Rus mercenaries in the Roman Empire in general). Her thesis postulated here is a great advancement for the field, yet I think she ended up dismissing some contrary evidence, either through omission (the case of the "Siglas Poveiras" de Póvoa de Varzim) or through sheer dismissal without any deep explanation (the case of the will of Mumadona Dias: why should we suppose Muslim pirates when the document suggests nothing of the kind and is explicit regarding the "Northmanni"?). That robs a star to this book.
44.
by
Maria João Lopo de CarvalhoFinish date: 7th September 2015
Genre: Historical fiction
Rating: B
Review: This is a very nice work of historical fiction on D. Leonor de Almeida Portugal, 4th Marquise of Alorna and 8th Countess of Assumar, a brilliant Portuguese noblewoman, poet and intellectual of the Enlightenment known throughout the European courts (among many of which she travelled during her life) and intellectual circles for the quality of her writings.
Despite some inaccuracies mainly as a result of overgeneralizations, the book depicts vivdly the times and life of this wonderful woman, from her childhood and youth passed in a nunnery for political reasons (her family was involved in the famous trial against the Távora for an attempt of murdering the king Joseph I of Portugal in 1759) until her death in 1839. The writing style is light, although the author sometimes makes exaggerations regarding their simlicityto the point that slightly affects the quality of the text at some points.
As a final note, I must say that it's very visible, especially by comparing and contrasting with Padeira de Aljubarrota (a bad book), that Maria João Lopo de Carvalho really admires and breathes the life of the main character and that's decidedly a very important factor for the sucess of this book (she also made much more research while writing this work than the medieval historical fiction counterpart).
45.
by
Maria Cristina PimentaFinish date: 12th September 2015
Genre: History
Rating: D+/C-
Review: This book was quite disappoiting, especially if compared to other books I've read of the Reis de Portugal (translation: "Kings of Portugal") series. I felt the book was more of a panegyric on Peter I of Portugal (r. 1357-1367) and his relationship with Inês de Castro (c. 1320-1355) than properly a History book intended to make a neutral (as far as possible, of course) appreciation of the king's life and reign.
The author just tried to stick her modern prejudices into the 14th century and defend as mush as she could the old mythology around Pedro and Inês' love or about the former's ten year reign to the point she even dared to use 20th century poetry to represent feelings of 14th century characters!
In Pimenta's vigorous defence of Peter, she also defended the biographed didn't have any sexual relationship with men because Fernão Lopes shouldn't be trusted and he loved Inês! This is very serious: she made several comments like this without taking into account any research on History of sexuality (there isn't a single book on the topic in her bibliography) while her argument about his desire for women is binary: if a man has known relationships with women, he can't be "homosexual"! That brings the problem someone could be capable of loving women and men, so that argument is not valid, while her mentions to "heterosexuality" and "homosexuality" also fall flat because such terms are inadequate as sexual identities for the 14th century. Finally, as a final blow, she couldn't have dismissed the sayings of Fernão Lopes on this matter: he wrote in the early 15th century and was patronized by the Portuguese kings of the Avis dynasty, a bastard cadet branch of the Portuguese House of Burgundy through Peter I himself. Since Fernão Lopes and his patrons had every interest in preserving a good memory of the father of the founder of the new royal dynasty, a remark that he had some form of sexual relationship with his squire Afonso Madeira ("E como quer que o el-rei muito amasse, mais que se deve aqui de dizer" - Chapter VIII of Chronica de El-Rei D. Pedro) shouldn't be discarded with a sheer dismissal of gossip since political interests regarding the royal family's legitimacy were necessarily at stake. This is just one example of Pimenta's distortions regarding the king's personal life that I condemn.
Pimenta also presented a view of Peter I's reign that is often a bit too rosy, namely regarding his diplomacy or justice. These kinds of anachronisms and acriticisms should be off the marks of any scholarly work and don't bring much prestige to either the author or the series, being also very ironical considering the book's very academic and dry tone. As such, this book is a travesty to History (even more considering her extensive, yet not exhaustive historiographical considerations), but I must say the chapters on legal History and the holy orders (the author's area of expertise) were good and the contextualization of Portuguese reality in the 14th century at the start is not bad at all.
OCTOBER46.
by
Maribel FierroFinish date: 2nd October 2015
Genre: History
Rating: A+
Review: A very good introduction to al-Andalus and the age of Abd-al-Rahman III. It's very readable and a wonderful addition to the Makers of the Muslim World series.
47.
by
Peter R.L. BrownFinish date: 17th October 2015
Genre: History
Rating: B
Review:
First of all, I must say I love this book. Why? Because of the way how it challenged old Gibbonian Orthodoxy in 1971 and revealed the myth of the "Dark Ages". This is the way how it should be viewed today: a founding stone of the scholarship of the latest 40 years on Late Antiquity (a term made popular by this work).
The challenge referred above is also the cause of what looks to be an extreme disregard for any kind of decline, yet I think many people attacking Brown's work fail to have this into account: he mainly seeked to challenge the old decadentist theories, namely regarding cultural and religious History (his specialties), and give an alternative vision of the period between 150-750 AD. That's the reason of any exaggeration: he was challenging Orthodoxy, not imposing it. However, despite this, I think his work could have been benefited if he worked also with economical History and his approach ends up being limited when it could go a bit further (besides admitting some degree of material/economic decline, in order to turn away most of his critics).
With this said, this work is wonderful. It is read very easily and there are lots of illustrations helping Brown to make his points, yet the ideas he communicates are very deep. The late antique spiritual anxieties and tensions, the art of the period and the politico-social evolution of the Dominate, for instance, are themes very well explored by him (in the context of the time the author wrote this book), yet I think he also made a few oversweeping generalizations or conceptual mistakes in his interpretations. For instance, the rise of the Abbasid caliphate seems to me to be the a further reshaping of a new world made on the basis of the Roman and Persian empires rather than a final victory of Persia over Rome, even in a cultural sense, while the ideas over Roman identities at this time needed some improvements, namely for the Eastern provinces, but again that's mostly a result of the age of this book.
Concluding, this is a historical masterpiece any one minimally interested in this period should read. It's just a pity there's no new edition. Perhaps Brown could write a kind of "sequel" called "Revisiting the World of Late Antiquity" or something like this?
48.
by
João Lobo AntunesFinish date: 18th October 2015
Genre: Medicine
Rating: B+
Review: I read this as optional bibliography for a class in my Medicine degree. It lays out very well the evolution of Medicine during the 20th century as well as its current problems and paradigms. It's just a pity it's too small and left desiring for a bit more. Highly recommended anyway, as expected from the author (a brilliant Portuguese neurosurgeon).
49.
by
Hugh KennedyFinish date: 26th October 2015
Genre: History
Rating: C
Review: It will be posted soon.
50.
by Anonymous (no photo)Finish date: 27th October 2015
Genre: Fiction
Rating: A
Review: Nice and short adaptation of the Epic of Gilgamesh.
51.
by
Leo TolstoyFinish date: 26th October 2015
Genre: Fiction
Rating: A
Review: It will be posted soon.
NOVEMBER52.
by
Paul StephensonFinish date: 7th November 2015
Genre: History
Rating: A
Review: An excellent piece of revisionist scholarship revealing "reality" and myth around Basil II the Porphyrogenitus' campaigns against the Bulgarian Empire under Samuel II, with a focus on the accounts of Skylitzes and Yahya of Antioch (it's a pity this chronicler's work is not completely preserved, since not only is this a contemporary source, but he was also very well informed on events). It was very enlightening to see how the myth of the Bulgar-Slayer started to rise based on unbased rumours and propaganda by the Angeloi against the new Second Bulgarian Empire.
53.
by Bruce Alberts (no photo)Finish date: 12th November 2015
Genre: Science; Medicine
Rating: B
Review: This was my Cellular Biology textbook. It has lots of enlightening illustrations and overall it's a very decent book, yet it has a few "loose ends" since it was designed for an introductory level.
54.
by Bernard S. Bachrach (no photo)Finish date: 14th November 2015
Genre: History
Rating: C
Review: This book is potentially a very interesting study on Merovingian military organization and highlights the continuities in the Merovingian military from the Roman Empire. On this it makes a very enlightening clarification (namely on the Burgundian armies, the most Romanized military structures in Francia), but I think it focuses too much on cavalry and little on Frankish infantry (despite an attempt of correcting that in the conclusion), while it doesn't refer enough to archaeology (it might have been useful to establish such continuities or the lack of them), making the book trust too much in sources like Gregory of Tours or Fredegar and his continuator, which brings problems of their own. The analysis of Agathias' and Procopius' texts and their accuracy regarding the Franks shatters some myths promoted by scholars like Brunner (in the late 19th century), but lacks a view of the literary dimension of the representation of the Franks as barbarians, while the use of weapons as the "anjon" might have provided an argument for Roman influence on the Frankish military (although its use comes from the 4th century AD).
Overall, a nice work, but it's perhaps a bit outdated and has some important flaws.
José Luís wrote: "51. by Leo TolstoyFinish date: 26th October 2015
Genre: Fiction
Rating: A
Review: It will be posted soon."
I like how you set up your postings.
Jose does a good job and his postings are according to the guidelines set for this topic. I enjoy reading his reviews.
The History Book Club
Books mentioned in this topic
The Death of Ivan Ilych (other topics)Merovingian Military Organization, 481-751 (other topics)
Essential Cell Biology (other topics)
The Legend of Basil the Bulgar-Slayer (other topics)
The Death of Ivan Ilych (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Leo Tolstoy (other topics)Bernard S. Bachrach (other topics)
Bruce Alberts (other topics)
Paul Stephenson (other topics)
Leo Tolstoy (other topics)
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Finish date: 7th July 2015
Genre: History
Rating: B+
Review: This is a very good introduction to the French Revolution and the Terror, namely on its political side, yet I hoped a bit more on the War of the First Coalition and the civil wars the Convention faced. That was important because of the subtitle and justify why the rating wasn't greater.
I also loved his reflections on the reasons for the Terror, which was the result of the demonization of all those opposing to Revolutionary, but above all, Jacobine ideals, coupled with the military and economic setbacks France suffered in 1792 and 1793 that made this radicalization as well as the reactionary answer to the Revolutionary state much easier, yet I felt both his introduction and conclusion focused too much in trying to get lessons for the modern world. That's highly troublesome in any historical work since it implies a greater dose of partisanship than usual in History (and there's inevitably a few of it since there aren't neutral historians).
Finally, I must say the translation was a bit odd at some points in grammatical terms and that there were also a few bits of misplaced ink at some pages, which isn't very professional from the editor.