Posts Tagged "history"

For historical content, this book is strong, and it effectively forms a man-on-the-ground narrative from the battles of the Chosin Reservoir campaign of the Korean War. But considered purely on writing quality, it's only decent. For instance, the author has a strange and persistent love of comma-splicing clauses that are nowhere near full sentences. I can accept it as a stylistic quirk, but it makes for uneven reading.

Enjoyable, but I felt the plot wasn't fully-formed, and I didn't like that things just petered out into epistolary epilogue fragments at the end.

This book was valuable even though I'd already read Under the Black Flag and The Republic of Pirates. Dolin focuses on piracy's effects on the eastern seaboard of colonial-era America, which the other books only covered in passing as necessary.

For instance, from The Republic of Pirates I knew the basic outline of Henry Avery's attack on Muslim treasure fleets off the coast of India, but I never knew that the Mughal Empire's outcry over that attack, transmitted to the British East India Company and from there to the Crown, directly led to an Act of Parliament which materially contributed to the decline of piracy in its Golden Age. I also didn't know that there was a thriving pirate base in Madagascar involved in both the slave trade and the transport of pirates to and from the New World.

I had a hard time picking a 3.5 or a 4. I can't help but feel I should have like this movie more. It's got my name written all over it: beautiful wilderness, swashbuckling adventure, sympathetic portrayal of (historical) religion, a conflict between nations playing out at the ground level of individual personalities... I can't lay my finger on why I considered it good, but not great.

The procession at ~23 minutes in is superb; I've been meaning to show it to D&D players, including the more orderly, religious part of the procession a few shots later.

Later, after Mendoza has killed his brother, he drags all his equipment up the waterfall in a bag of netting. Nothing attached to his body, around his waist, or on his back. The bag contains his armor, his sword, and other articles that would be like a second skin to a warrior.

The title is absolutely killer. Pity it wasn't used on a better book.

A World Lit Only By Fire is about the transition from the medieval world to the Renaissance one, focusing on how the rise of Protestantism shattered the medieval worldview's unchanging conceptions of the world and man's place in it. The book offers a reasonably detailed account of the Reformation, and how its flames were fanned by anticlericalism and budding nationalism, but I don't think the author does a great job even staking out a thesis, let alone defending one. He couldn't seem to make up his mind whether he was explaining history or merely describing it.

A stirring action-romance in a pseudo-historical French setting, with sewer escapes, a headstrong young thief, cursed lovers, Rutger Hauer's preposterous double crossbow and solid shots of landscapes, medieval interiors and the villain's opulent digs. The one negative is the idiotic 80s synthesizer soundtrack, which feels equally out of place for a hermit's redoubt, crossing treacherous ice or a duel in a church.

I should have loved this book. It was recommended by a dear friend, and the elevator pitch is pure Maxwell bait: "In the 17th century, an Italian is captured by Turks and forced to work for their rulers".

But by God, the writing is dull, dull, dull. 80-90% of this slim book is the main character endlessly pontificating or having pointless arguments with the Turk who is his tutor, student, and jailer. It's not quite as bad as The Seven Madmen by Roberto Arlt, another mind-melting bore with a navel-gazing, daydreaming, self-hating protagonist. But it's friggin' close, and in some cases it offends more: the setup for the most predictable twist in the world is not so much telegraphed as repeatedly blasted into your face.

Barzun's magnum opus illustrates 500 years of European cultural history, with details focused primarily on the lives, works, and philosophies of key players great and small. He asserts in plain but erudite language what people thought and why they thought it, and how ideas and movements related to contemporary culture and influenced major events. His observations continually return to major themes, including individualism, self-consciousness, emancipation, analysis, reductivism and primitivism, which he uses to characterize change and continuity among works of art, social movements, and strains of thought. Interlude chapters step back from the personal perspectives to show what it was like to live in key cities during the time periods when they were most prominent on the world stage.

A loving meditation on the differences between knowledge gained through solitary scholarliness, and understanding gained through worldliness and devotion to artistry. The titular Narcissus is an austere monk; Goldmund, his former pupil and fellow monk who leaves the monastery to travel the world and follow his passions. I am much more of a Goldmund than a Narcissus; though I have done a number of things in my life that must surely be coded as scholarly, my motivation to undertake those things has stemmed from personal interest and passion in various subjects. I recommend this book to anyone who considers himself an artist.

Skillfully weaves together biographies and historical events from the Golden Age of Piracy, focusing on the lives and exploits of Henry Avery, Blackbeard, Charles Vane, and other major pirates in the West Indies (which includes the Caribbean Sea.)