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4.07 AVERAGE
4.07 AVERAGE
Brilliant. Captivating. Fascinating. A must read, even though it's like a million pages.
informative
reflective
slow-paced
dark
informative
fast-paced
dark
informative
reflective
tense
slow-paced
A little too much battle history for my personal taste, but very well written and researched historical nonfiction.
Three stars for the work necessary to write an engagingly-written narrative. As a history, however, it gives little coherence to fourteenth century Europe as a whole. Its greatest problem, though, lies in the way it essentializes the past as incomprehensibly other, rather like Said's category of Orientalism does to the East. There is little to no attempt to understand the motivations of the main characters as people like you and me. The result is to reify the late middle ages as an entity that can be studied and depicted in the service of an imperial modernity. A kind of history, to be sure, but not one I find helpful.
A terrifically told tale of a terrible, terrible time.
Not a bad book at all. Very informative. I've always been fascinated with the Medieval era so this was a good read for that. I especially enjoyed learning more about the black plague.
informative
slow-paced