Medieval Europe Kindle Edition

Wickham does a decent job creating an overview narrative of the Medieval period. However, Wickham needs to focus on whats required for a paragraph and what could go into a footnote. The constant adding of extra thoughts and information throughout the book makes comprehension incredibly hard and frustrating.Another problem I have with Wickham is the first chapter. The first chapter misleads readers into believing it is going to set them up for the rest of the book. Where in reality the first chapter is just a foreword by the author and his dislike of modernity ( the quality or condition of being modern). This chapter is tough to navigate, comprehend, and enjoy. Setting up, at least for me, dread to read the rest of his work.I don't want to say I would not suggest Wickham for anyone who wants an overview of the medieval period. As he does bring up a bunch of exciting concepts and events that happened during the medieval period. I would suggest skipping the first chapter entirely. Start at chapter two and don't feel inadequate if there is a need to reread a section. I am currently gaining an MA in Medieval Europe and England and found this tough to understand.Thank you!!

The author is brilliant and has a depth of understanding of the age. Unfortunately, it seems as though he wants to punish the reader. Perhaps, he thinks that he has worked so hard to decipher the age that his readers must pay penance. Otherwise, I don’t see how he could create a maze of a sentence such as: “We do not have the remarkable early notarial registers for Pisa that we have for Genoa, its sister city and rival, from the 1150s onwards, which show the complexity of the contracts which ship-owners made by now, and the density of funding of sea commerce engaged in by traditional élite families, stretching again, very visibly, all over the Mediterranean.”He seems to take perverse pleasure in jamming as many ideas as possible in each sentence. As a result, the reader is left holding a disappearing rope of an idea. By the end of a paragraph, I had to return to the beginning just to remind myself of the original thesis.Wickham has a pure historian’s sense. He refuses to bow to the popular or established interpretation. Sadly, I was only able to glean a third of his brilliance due to his writing.

This review pertains only to the CD audio version. The book is good and the narrator is excellent. I am giving it low marks for something that an editor or reviewer should have caught. The book is full of "internal references" that are unnecessary and irritating. You're listening to chapter 2, and suddenly the narrator stops and says, "Listen to chapter 7." These references are always forward. Do you honestly think a listener enjoying chapter 2 will stop and try to advance to chapter 7 to "listen," and then try to get back to chapter 2? After a number of these inane statements, I stopped listening. Too bad because these spoiled an informative book read by a first-rate reader. Take these out an re-issue.

This is a truly magnificent summary of what is known about the Middle Ages in Europe, where Europe is broadly conceived: the Byzantine Empire to Andalus, Iceland to Russia, although inevitably, in the current state of research, most attention focuses on developments in Western Europe. Wickham summarizes with great clarity the developing scholarly consensus on how Europe developed during this era; broad trends are visible, almost century by century, but with major differences between particular areas and considerable interaction especially during the later period. Nothing significant is omitted. Political developments take pride of place, but Wickham devotes ample space to the economy as it gradually revived after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, and also to social and religious conflicts. The culture of the Middle Ages, by contrast, is given relatively short shrift since many other surveys cover it. I read this book in preparation for a trip to see French Gothic cathedrals, and I now feel much better equipped to place them in a proper historical context. Wickham's writing, furthermore, is engrossing, often pointed and always precise. The author intervenes more than occasionally to give his personal views, which, coming from such an accomplished scholar, are more than welcome. The maps and illustrations are excellent. In short, it would be hard to better this volume.

Very much enjoyed this book. A fairly dense read but a good flow of concepts and drivers of cultural development of polities within the period of 500-1500 AD. One bone to pick, the author rightly notes the substantial increase in population and production during the period beginning with roughly 900 AD and ending with the Plague breakout of the 1340s. What Mr. Wickham failed to mention is the Little Optimum or Medieval Climate Optimum which warmed the earth during 950 AD to 1250 AD, providing for an increase in arable land which substantially contributed to these increases. The subsequent cooling of the earth post-1250 AD compressed much of the northern European population, producing a cauldron of health issues perfectly suited to accelerate the mortality rates associated with the Plague. A big miss there.

I bought this book hoping to learn more about Medieval Europe since I studied mostly US history in college and for my work in museums. This is probably a really good book if you already know the history of the period, but it talks in broader terms than I was hoping for and his writing style requires you to trudge through it. I was also disappointed because he didn't even mention the Renaissance and how that changed things. The major plus of this book is its short length.

but very dry

Nice book for a lay history enthusiast like me, well written and very well structured. It's also surprisingly short for a period that covers a 1000-years. Must say that I expected a more colourful account of life, culture and practices in the middle ages. Instead it’s a high-level chronological narrative/interpretation of what drove key changes throughout the period, with not too much detail.Having said that, the writer uses interesting scholarly tools like the source of taxes to explain differences in development and isn’t shy to take a more controversial view. It’s also refreshing that he mostly ignores the chewed-out lives and deeds of well-known rulers.Aside from this there weren’t that many new things for me and I found that a lot of important topics were only dealt with in summary.

This most certainly is not a popular history book. The book focuses on the sociological and political aspects of the development of post-Roman societies within and outside the sphere of influence of the former Roman Empire. The reader is assumed to be fully familiar with the historical background facts, events and developments over that 1,000 year period. Nothing wrong with that of course, but I'm just saying that this has to be your expertise and field of interest.If it's not, you will find this book a struggle to get through. The academic style in which it is written doesn't help. The text is full of forward and back references , a thing that my teachers always firmly taught me to avoid when I was still writing papers. And personally, I found little of "the great wit and style" that the book's liner notes tell us the book was written in. Luckily for the serious but lazy student, the last chapter is a summary of the book's contents. The really serious student however might well decide that 1,000 years of sociological and political development in around 250 pages means that this book is not digging deep enough to their taste.As an introductory textbook for University level history students this book certainly is useful and informative. The general reader looking for more popular history and more accessible writing should look elsewhere.

This is a brilliant summary of 1000 years of European history. It's also very well written. Wickham’s pithy way of packing ideas into single sentences is sometimes breathtaking. So is his forthright approach to teleological and other commonly perpetuated myths about the period. If I've given it four stars rather than five, this is because the emphasis is too much on political history at the expense of the economic and social background, leaving many questions which I suspect could be answered, particularly given the wealth of recent new archaeological material. But for the general reader seeking to get developments across the continent in this difficult-to-understand period into perspective, this is an excellent book. I particularly appreciated that unlike so many books claiming to be histories of Europe, this one deals with the whole continenet, not just its south-west corner.

This is a very helpful book especially if you are studying history at university level. Would recommend.

This is a brilliant book, a true replacement for Richard Southern's 'Making of the Middle Ages' and Maurice Keen's 'Penguin History of Medieval Europe'.Actually, its more than this, because its focus is wider, both geographically and temporally. It deals with the whole of Europe - West, East, South and North, and including Scandinavia and the Ottoman Empire (traditionally neglected). It describes the entire thousand years from 500 to 1500. But none of the depth of previous studies is lost, because Professor Wickham bases his narrative and analysis on a myriad of sources, and the latest research.It is not only a very complete history. It is in some ways a radical interpretation. Amongst other things, he re-habilitates the later Middle Ages as period worthy of study in its own right, though it was at one time seen as a period of decline, or else as a harbinger of better things to come. The description of the Carolingians made me realise for the first time what they were all about, as did his explanation that there was a 'feudal revolution' between c 1000 and c 1150.Tour de force, I say.