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3.63 AVERAGE
3.63 AVERAGE
challenging
informative
medium-paced
informative
medium-paced
I really enjoyed Tom Hollands' previous book Rubicon, but I found Millennium a little bit less coherent.
Rubicon is more dramatic, with charismatic personalities and huge political shifts that sweep the reader up in the excitement and get them interested. This book seems more unfocussed as it switches between the histories of different nations without much of a common theme between them (other than each starts with that country's conversion to christianity).
There are other stories in this book that seem like far more exciting subject material than the main thrust including the decline of Byzantium and the crusades (the book ends with a very rushed account of the first crusade).
The expected apocalypse with the coming of the millennium (hence the title of the book) is only really discussed in the first half of the book. Much of the book describes the evolution of the papacy from being a weak and powerless provincial bishopric into the undisputed head of the western church (with political independence from the kings of europe.
Rubicon is more dramatic, with charismatic personalities and huge political shifts that sweep the reader up in the excitement and get them interested. This book seems more unfocussed as it switches between the histories of different nations without much of a common theme between them (other than each starts with that country's conversion to christianity).
There are other stories in this book that seem like far more exciting subject material than the main thrust including the decline of Byzantium and the crusades (the book ends with a very rushed account of the first crusade).
The expected apocalypse with the coming of the millennium (hence the title of the book) is only really discussed in the first half of the book. Much of the book describes the evolution of the papacy from being a weak and powerless provincial bishopric into the undisputed head of the western church (with political independence from the kings of europe.
This is a fascinating time in history that is often looked over and Holland did a very comprehensive job covering this time period. It is so dense with information it was difficult to keep up with all of the places and especially names. It would have been better suited for a more concentrated review of a part of this time period instead of a couple hundred years of Western Europe. This is one I might come back to after getting a better grasp on the names of the period to help follow along a bit better than my first read.
As a huge admirer of Tom Holland's earlier books "Rubicon" and "Persian Fire" I came to this one with high expectations, which it didn't quite meet. The theory behind the book, that many of the changes of the 10th and 11th centuries were caused by the idea that the Millennium heralded the coming of the end of the world, was fascinating and I learnt a great deal about the history of the Holy Roman Empire and its conflict with the Papacy. Add in the rise of castle building in France, the influence of the monastery of Cluny, the fall of the Caliphate of Cordoba, the internal politics of the areas to become France and Germany, and that's a lot of material; then include the Vikings, the Saxon Kingdom of England and its invasion by the Normans, and that's even more information to digest. This was one of the problems of the book; the author was trying to cover too much, which meant there was an inevitable loss of focus. I enjoy excitingly written narrative history but my problem here was that the author's prose style, which is very vivid, at times became quite tiring to read and towards the end began to sound repetitive. An interesting, but flawed book.
informative
lighthearted
medium-paced
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Interesting theme. Quite dense and hard to follow at points. But when the narrative got going into full steam I was on the edge of my seat. A bit too much waffle in between
challenging
informative
slow-paced
I was disappointed in this book, having loved both Rubicon and Persian Fire. I have finally finished it, after 2 or 3 abortive attempts when it was first published. I found it difficult to keep track of who was who (so many Ottos and Henry’s) and how events stood in relation to what else was happening in the world. The prose was heavy going and I kept having to re-read sentences to make sense of them. There is no real conclusion to the book, it just seems to stop at the end of the conquest of Jerusalem. I would have liked more of a summary of just how the world had changed in the 2 centuries the book covers.
I was struck by what a blood-thirsty period it was and also the youth of many of the leaders and kings when they first started to assert their power. It made Game of Thrones seem rather less implausible, in terms of both its atrocities and how young many of the kings and warlords were.
And it is disquieting to consider that the foundations of Christendom and the continuing place (even existence) of Christianity in Europe, not to mention the rest of the world, is largely because of such determined annihilation of anything that threatened it.
I was struck by what a blood-thirsty period it was and also the youth of many of the leaders and kings when they first started to assert their power. It made Game of Thrones seem rather less implausible, in terms of both its atrocities and how young many of the kings and warlords were.
And it is disquieting to consider that the foundations of Christendom and the continuing place (even existence) of Christianity in Europe, not to mention the rest of the world, is largely because of such determined annihilation of anything that threatened it.
adventurous
informative
slow-paced
adventurous
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
medium-paced