<![CDATA[Thibault Serlet - Book Reviews]]>

<![CDATA[Thibault Serlet - Book Reviews]]>Mon, 08 Jun 2026 18:01:23 -0700Weebly<![CDATA[Magna Carta: The Birth of Liberty]]>Mon, 08 Jun 2026 14:14:07 GMThttp://www.thibaultserlet.com/book-reviews/magna-carta-the-birth-of-liberty

Magna Carta: The Birth of Liberty
By Dan Jones
Published in November 2016
288 Pages
Thibault’s Score: 5/5

Everybody heard about the Magna Carta in school; but few people really know what it means. Despite nearly a decade of intense study of medieval history, I also fell into this category.

Aliénor of Aquitaine’s worst son - King John - ended up on the throne after his older brother Richard died without any heirs. King John had a strange personality - he was paradoxically controlling and micromanaging while also being neglectful and distracted.

The King of France immediately opposed King John’s coronation. As a result, the Kingdom of King John - Normandy and England - immediately found itself at war with France. Thanks to John’s incompetent leadership, England immediately lost Normandy. This marked the beginning of Normany being permanently severed from England (although there would be brief periods of reconquest from 1346 - 1360 and again from 1417 - 1450).

John’s obsession for the rest of his reign was the recovery of England’s French territories; which would trigger nearly 300 years of broken warfare between France and England. To pay for the theoretical reconquest of Normandy, King John levied high and unpredictable taxes. Worse, the gentry was already economically suffering due to the loss of Normandy.

In 1214, King John finally launched a disastrous invasion of France. His forces were almost immediately defeated. Frustrated, the English barons launched a full scale rebellion against King John. The barons were also supported by the understandably peeved French, who even deployed a military force that campaigned in the interior of England for roughly 10 months led by the King of France himself.

King John’s military incompetence once again resulted in his repeated defeats at the hands of the Barons and French. He paid the King of France to leave England; then signed a peace treaty with the Barons to end that rebellion. Once the French left England and the Barons settled back down, King John almost immediately repudiated the peace treaty. That peace treaty was the Magna Carta.

The Barons immediately rose up again in revolt after King John repudiated the Magna Carta. The Kingdom of England was plunged into a period of anarchy and civil war. King John died in disgrace, leaving his 7 year old son Henry III to inherit the collapsing power of the throne.

Luckily, Henry III had an incredible asset: the loyal knight William Marshal. Marshal was incredibly loyal, honest, and competent. Marshal immediately confirmed the Magna Carta, but with some edits. This calmed the Barons who pledged loyalty to Henry III. Crisis was averted.

The Magna Carta went from a civil war peace treaty to the foundational document outlining the roles and responsibilities of the state. It would be repeatedly edited, changed, and slowly grant ever more freedoms and constitutional protections to the people.

Most significantly, there was a repeat of the Baron’s war. A century later, the powerful knight Simon de Montfort made the case that the crown had neglected to preserve the rights outlined in the Magna Carta. He rose up, and once again, forced the King to reinstate and expand the protections offered by the Magna Carta. Since the Second Baron’s War, the Magna Carta has been the single most important document in British legal history.

The Magna Carta slowly came to enshrine many key protections that we today associate with Western civilization. This includes the right of the people to be consulted about their taxation; the right of trial by jury; the protection of property rights; and the ability for the people to be represented in a parliament. It also includes many rights that are mostly obsolete today but were important at the time such as the supremacy of the church over the crown; limitations on the ability of kings to create protected hunting forests; and the protection of the rights of lesser nobility.

This book was remarkably well written. Dan Jones history books are always great. They are easy to follow for readers who know only a little bit about history; but are always insightful for more advanced readers.

If you want to study English history, legal history, or the Magna Carta, then I recommend this book very strongly.

]]><![CDATA[Just So Stories]]>Mon, 01 Jun 2026 15:18:13 GMThttp://www.thibaultserlet.com/book-reviews/just-so-stories

Just So Stories
By Rudyard Kipling
Published in 1902
108 Pages
Thibault’s Score: 4/5

This is the first (hopefully of many) books that I’ve reviewed which I’ve read with my daughter.

Just So Stories is a compilation of “animal origin stories” written by Rudyard Kipling in 1902 for his daughter Josephine.

Kipling wrote Just So Stories and the more famous “The Jungle Book” based on compilations of bedtime stories he remembered telling his daughter. Josephine tragically died in 1899 at the age of 6 of pneumonia.

This book went way beyond the head of my 3 year old daughter. The dated language; subtle references to geography; and strange creation of the world scenarios were too much. But she “sort of understood” some of the action about animals and it was a lot of fun. I want to revisit it when she is 6, I think that is when it will be the most age appropriate.

Each story seeks to explain how some animal came to be.

The camel has a hump on his back because he was grumpy and would refuse to work just saying “humph.” The Rhino has scratchy skin because he stole the cake from a Parsee who put the crumbs under his skin. The armadillo was created when a turtle and a hedgehog teamed up and shared abilities to outsmart predators. The elephant got his trunk after a crocodile pulled on his nose too long. My daughter especially liked the elephant story; but my favorite was the armadillo story or the crab story.

I don’t want to spoil any more. You should read this with your kids. Or just alone as an adult - it makes for funny reading even for larger readers.

]]><![CDATA[The Lost Teachings of the Cathars]]>Mon, 18 May 2026 14:21:54 GMThttp://www.thibaultserlet.com/book-reviews/the-lost-teachings-of-the-cathars

The Lost Teachings of the Cathars: Their Beliefs and Practices
by Andrew Phillip Smith
Published in November 2015
256 Pages
Thibault’s Score: 4/5

The Cathars were a group of heretical Christians who lived in Southern France. It is unclear exactly when they appeared, but were a small but demographically noticeable minority by the early 1200s. In 1209, Pope Innocent III declared the Albigensian Crusade - an internal “mini-crusade” within France, supposedly to exterminate the Cathars.

The Cathars lived in a territory called Languedoc in the south of what is today France. The crusade was led by French crusaders, but had international participants from England, Germany, Spain, and Italy. When the crusaders arrived, they massacred the people of Languedoc - exterminating the local Catholic nobility and massacring the civilian population. The local nobles were replaced by French nobles, and Languedoc was incorporated into France.

The Cathars were a tiny minority within Languedoc. Languedoc was nominally a fief of the Catholic King of Aragon, but the Aragonians had no effective control. The political effect of the crusade was to permanently sever Languedoc and Foix from Aragon, and integrate it into France.

The Cathars were demographically insignificant in most areas affected by the crusade. The crusaders exterminated them along with the majority Catholic population. One crusader famously declared “kill them all, and let God sort them out.” When the war was coming to a close, and it became politically unprofitable to kill civilians, the crusaders spared all civilians - including the Cathar heretics. This proves that the crusade was predominantly about politics and the papal sanctioned annexation of Languedoc into France; not about exterminating a heresy. The Cathars were essentially semi-innocent bystanders caught in the mix.

The Cathars would later be hunted down and nearly exterminated by the inquisition over the following century and a half. It is notable that the Cathars continued to exist long after the Albigensian Crusade. They experienced several re-emergences, then re-exterminations, and ultimately disappeared from history.

Despite their disappearance, many clues suggest that others took on their most important ideas. There are protestant movements in the 1600s that seem to take their ideas; some of their iconography appears on everything from Tarot cards to watermarks on paper; and future authors and artists seem like they are influenced by them. In the 19th century, romantics and theosophists influenced by Rudolf Steiner travelled to Languedoc. There, they rediscovered and re-imagined Catharism, forming various neo-Cathar revival movements. These movements are, at best, fantastic re-imaginings because much of what the Cathars themselves believed has been lost to time.
Catharism was a gnostic Christian sect that drew most of its ideas from Bogolimilism. They seem to have maintained contacts with the Bogomils until the bitter end, with there even being a visit of “Bulgarian Cathars” (likely in fact Bogomils) who came to Northern Italy to help retrain Cathar bishops following the inquisition and Crusade. The Catholic Inquisition itself wrote that the Cathars came to France because of returning Crusaders who were influenced by Bogomils while travelling through the Balkans.

The Cathars likely drew on other cultural traditions such as other Christian gnostic sects, remnants of Languedoc folk religion, Manicheism, and perhaps even Buddhism. It is hard to trace exactly how these influences moved, because there were significant cultural contacts with both the Cathars via the Crusades to the Holy Land, as well as the Bogomils via Constantinople. Smith doesn’t cover this, but various steppe people like the Pechenegs, Avar, and Cuman all raided the Balkans. These peoples originally came from Central Asia, where Buddhism and Manicheanism thrived and survived well into the 11th century. The idea that ideas came alongside raiders and merchants is now widely accepted by historians; but significant ambiguity remains about which ideas came and when.

Smith spends much time discussing the specific beliefs of the Cathars. I found this to be the least interesting part of the book; because they seem like fairly generic Gnostic ideas I’ve come across before. Smith is himself a neo-gnostic Christian and is very sympathetic to the Cathars; while I very much see these as some of the most repulsive anti-human ideologies to ever exist. Despite my distaste for their actual ideas, I still recommend these chapters. Readers coming across gnosticism for the first time will find Smith’s explanations to be very clear and refreshing.

Smith is obviously biased; and makes no effort to hide his pro Cathar bias. This is actually refreshing. Many historical books are biased, but cloak themselves with a veneer of academic neutrality. They hide their nonsense by using academic jargon. Their jargon substitutes short words for long, without adding any specificity or insight. I was pleased to find that Smith’s writing style is particularly clear and concise.

Smith ends the book with a discussion of neo-Cathar movements, and how they intersected with a wide array of unrelated groups such as the followers of Rudolf Steiner, Nazi Germany, Christian revival movements, occultists, and hippies.

If you want to get a good introduction to the Cathars, I very highly recommend this book. This book answers most of the supposed “mysteries” by clearly outlining all of the available evidence.

]]><![CDATA[UFO: The Inside Story of the US Government's Search for Alien Life Here―and Out There]]>Mon, 18 May 2026 13:44:08 GMThttp://www.thibaultserlet.com/book-reviews/ufo-the-inside-story-of-the-us-governments-search-for-alien-life-here-and-out-there

UFO: The Inside Story of the US Government's Search for Alien Life Here―and Out There
by Garrett M. Graff
Published in November 2023
544 Pages
Thibault’s Score: 4/5

This book is a history of all of the well documented efforts by the US government to look for extraterrestrial life.

I grew up in Palo Alto, where the omnipresent Stanford University “dish” could be seen from just about anywhere. The “dish” was used by a wide variety of groups - such as the US Air Force to spy on the Soviet Union and astronomers to do research. The story that always intrigued me the most growing up was that the dish was used by a group of scientists called SETI to listen for potential signs of extraterrestrial communication in space.

This book is a history of SETI and how it ties into the many other weird government funded initiatives to search for extra terrestrials. SETI always had a good reputation in the Bay Area - as a credible, mainstream scientific effort supported by reputable universities. To my surprise, this book revealed that SETI was tied at the hip to US government funded investigations into “flying saucers” during the 1950s and 1960s.

This book covers SETI, Project Blue Book, ATIP, and the many other government funded initiatives to look for extraterrestrial life. They range greatly in terms of their scope and credibility. On one hand, some involved astronomers looking for signs of Dyson Spheres. On the other, some involved interviewing alleged alien abductees.

Fascinatingly, nearly all of these projects overlap. The scientists, financiers, donors, and supporting government officials all connect to each other. They all knew each other, and participated in some sort of ecosystem. During the height of the Cold War, the ecosystem even included Soviet scientists.

The book was very entertaining and well written. It has a little bit of a slow start, but considering the overall length of the work, it is acceptable. At first I thought it would be nothing more than ratiocination and pontification; but it quickly moves into serious substance.

The book begins with an explanation of how the US government’s interest in extra terrestrials was piqued shortly after WW2. During WW2, there were accounts of US pilots of strange glowing orbs in the sky. The allies believed it was a German weapon; but upon raiding German archives realized the Germans had seen the same orbs but assumed it was an allied weapon. Then, there was a series of crashes of vehicles or rockets in Scandinavia that were neither Axis nor Soviet in late 1945. The US government began investigating potential extra terrestrial activity by 1946.

The book ends with the major revelations of pilots such as David Fravor and the “gofast” and “gimble” videos. It explains more recent initiatives such as AATIP.

I would recommend this book as a serious introduction to the topic of UFOs.

]]><![CDATA[De Situ Britanniae]]>Tue, 28 Apr 2026 08:45:41 GMThttp://www.thibaultserlet.com/book-reviews/de-situ-britanniae

De Situ Britanniae
By Richard of Cirencester (purportedly) or Charles Bertram (alleged)
Published in the 14th century (purportedly) or 1757 (alleged)
81 Pages
Thibault’s Score: 5/5

This is the strangest book review that I have ever written - so buckle up.

I was reading an early 19th century edition of a crusades Chronicle of Richard of Devizes. My edition included a reprint of another medieval text - De Situ Britanniae by Richard of Cirencester.

Without any context, I read Richard of Cirencester’s De Situ Britanniae. I will now tell you what De Situ Britanniae contains.

De Situ Britanniae is (supposedly) a medieval monk’s attempt at reconciling Roman place names with the medieval place names of his own day. It is mostly a geographical work that contains some crude maps. He also includes some ethnographic information which he supposedly gathered from various classical texts as well as interviews with Welsh bards.

De Situ Britanniae was a very interesting text. The first thing that struck me was how clearly written it was compared to other medieval texts. It includes one of the best descriptions of classical druids I had come across. It also includes some interesting scientific observations about the size of planet earth and Britain’s climate.

The edition I had was bilingual - it contained the original midieval Latin, as well as the English translation.

Then I sat down to write the book review. This is when things get really, really weird.

I pulled up the Wikipedia page to get some historical context. It turns out that the book was actually an 18th century forgery. My 19th century edition was printed before the forgery was uncovered, so does not mention this.

The allegation is that a British historian living in Denmark in the 1700s called Charles Bertram had an academic dispute with another historian. The two were debating some obscure geographical details. Then, Bertram “won” the debate by producing this book which he had found.

In 1838, the text was studied at length and many anomalies were discovered. Since 1838, the academic consensus is that the text is a forgery. However, because I was reading a reprint from before 1838, I had no clue of this.

One telltale sign is that the text quotes Tacitus. However, the version of Tacitus quotes came from a 16th century Venetian mistranslation, which had introduced mistakes into the text. Because Richard of Cirencester lived a century prior to this mistranslation, he couldn’t possibly have had access to this mistranslation. There were also many other geographic and linguistic errors.

But then, things get stranger. Later in the 19th century, other historians debunked the debunking. They argued that although Charles Bertram had altered parts of the text to win his historical argument, other parts were in fact authentic. Charles Bertram was a historian and had access to many authentic and obscure primary materials. He inserted many of these materials into his forgery.

Today, all historians accept that either all or the majority of De Situ Britanniae is a forgery. But there is still debate as to whether the forgery might contain bits and pieces of evidence from the 14th century.

Just because of the sheer strangeness of this book, I recommend at least reading the Wikipedia page.

]]><![CDATA[Chronicon de rebus gestis Ricardi Primi]]>Tue, 28 Apr 2026 08:27:31 GMThttp://www.thibaultserlet.com/book-reviews/chronicon-de-rebus-gestis-ricardi-primi

Chronicon de rebus gestis Ricardi Primi
By Richard of Devizes
Published in 1198
82 Pages
Thibault’s Score: 3/5

Usually, modern people over-estimate how bloodthirsty and savage medieval writers are. If you want to find an example of a medieval author who conforms to all of the worst modern stereotypes about the Middle Ages, read Richard of Devizes.

This is actually the second time that I’ve read Richard of Devizes - last time was a couple years ago when my knowledge of the period was less advanced.

Richard of Devizes was a monk and political pundit who wrote texts to defend the regime of Richard Lionheart and Aliénor of Aquitaine.

What is striking about Devizes' account is how bloodthirsty he is. He is constantly calling for and celebrating violence against Lionheart’s political enemies in England; against Muslims; against Italians; against Greeks; and most importantly, against Jews.

His style of writing (or my early 19th century translation) makes him very hard to read. The book is also disorganized, with different pages jumping around at random times. This is a far cry from other more rational medieval authors.

Two passages struck me in particular.

The first is how he describes Lionheart’s arrival in the Norman kingdom of Sicily. Instead of respecting his Sicilian Norman allies, Lionheart starts ravaging the countryside and extorts his Norman cousins for money and supplies. Instead of condemning this attack against a fellow Christian, Richard of Devizes enthusiastically praises Lionheart.

When I first read this chronicle, I just assumed that medieval people were savages. Having read more primary source materials, I now understand that Devizes’ endorsement of bloodshed against fellow Christians was not mainstream.

The other notable passage is his description of the mass murder of Jews in celebration of Lionheart’s coronation. He is the first author to use the word “holocaust” to describe the murder of Jews. This passage is well known, and I noticed it last time. What I didn’t remember or notice was another passage later in the book where he describes a Jewish pedophile who lures a French boy to England to molest and kill him. The story is lurid and very detailed. This is the first primary source example of what historians assume is “blood libel” that I have come across.

Historiographically, it is hard for me to judge whether or not Richard of Devizes is lying about his description of the Jews. At first, when I came across the passage about the boy killed by Jews, I assumed it was blood libel. The main reason behind my assumption was that the chronicler seems like he is writing specifically for the purpose of justifying atrocities in Greece and elsewhere. It wouldn’t be out of character to take an isolated incident out of context, and amplify it to justify his “holocaust.” However, there could be more to it. In the middle ages Jews were a “ghetto minority.” Low trust ethnic minorities in high crime areas often have this kind of social problem. Nearly a thousand years later, in the very same city of Winchester, there are Pakistani Muslim grooming gangs that rape and traffic young British girls. Similar conditions could lead to similar circumstances. The story could be completely real.

I don’t recommend reading Richard of Devizes for the average reader. It is difficult material. It also makes for somewhat dull reading. But if you are serious about studying history, you need to read primary sources. Devizes isn’t the first source I would recommend, but for more advanced readers or for those interested in Jewish history, his chronicle might be of interest.

]]><![CDATA[How to Plan a Crusade]]>Fri, 24 Apr 2026 08:44:07 GMThttp://www.thibaultserlet.com/book-reviews/how-to-plan-a-crusade

How to Plan a Crusade: Religious War in the High Middle Ages
By Christopher Tyerman
Published in October 2017
432 Pages
Thibault’s Score: 3/5

My thoughts on this book can be summarized in four words:

Fascinating topic; mediocre execution.

The book advertises itself as focusing on the details of how leaders planned, financed, and executed crusades. The problem is that only roughly half of the book actually covers this topic; and the other half goes into semi-relevant side topics. The author is further hampered by an annoying academic writing style artificially inserts “big word fluff,” rather than focusing on clarity and concrete details.

More than half of the book covers the ideological, psychological, religious, cultural, and social aspects of crusade planning. I found this frustrating, as many books already cover this when discussing the crusades. The truly unique parts of the book which focused on the details of financing, recruitment, transportation, and logistics were completely buried.

The book was also not written for the right reasons. The author focused on trying to prove the obvious: that medieval people were rational actors. His reason for covering the planning of the crusades is to prove this pedantic point. Only uneducated boomers who got all of their information from 1980s movies believe this. It is a very dated stereotype that doesn’t even need to be mentioned. For a younger reader like me, who never saw medieval people as irrational, the constant rehashing of this argument was very annoying and distracting. Instead, I wish that rather than telling the reader “why” this book is important; he just focused on the “what” and let the reader decide that for themselves.

I think that part of the reason for the focus on the mental rather than physical aspects is because writing about the granular specifics is much more difficult. The written sources tend to cover the ideology; and so does Tyerman. A true discussion of granular military logistics and economics would require more inference from non crusade sources; and more archeology. Instead of writing the book that readers like me who already know about the crusades were all hoping to read; he wrote the book that was easy to write.

In my book reviews, I usually try to list some of the interesting things that I learned. However, the writing style was so distracting, and the information so generic, that I can’ t remember if individual facts I know about crusades planning came from this book or from other sources.

Here is an example. Tyerman spends many pages proving that crusaders used accounting techniques. He gives quote after quote after quote from primary sources proving that knights knew and cared about accounting. To someone like me, this is completely obvious and at most merits a paragraph. What I was burning to know was the specific details of what the accounts look like, how the accounting was executed, etc… He never covers these details, and instead moves onto the next topic.

Likewise, he has many pages where he proves that there was debt financing of crusading activity. Once more, to anyone who knows even the basics like me, this is obvious. What I really wanted to know was who was doing the lending, where the money lent came from, what the interest rates were, what the terms of the agreements look like, etc… He never covers this. What is worse is that I have done a little bit of this research myself, and I know that at least for the doomed fourth crusade there is at least some evidence for what this might have looked like in practice.

Tyerman could not have picked a more interesting topic for this book. But I still do not recommend it. This book was way too deep and in the weeds when it came to things like justifying the crusades; but frustratingly vague when it came to military logistics or economics. This book will be too hard for novices; but frustrating for anyone who wants a more in depth view. This book has no audience.

]]><![CDATA[The Taint]]>Sun, 12 Apr 2026 10:38:14 GMThttp://www.thibaultserlet.com/book-reviews/the-taint

The Taint and Other Novellas: A Cthulhu Mythos Collection
By Brian Lumley
Published in October 2008
416 Pages
Thibault’s Score: 1/5

I am a big fan of HP Lovecraft, but I’ve read almost all of his works (including some half assed ones he wrote as a teenager). In my quest to find more follow on works and further explore his universe, I have been delving more broadly into the corpus of other works who contributed to the Lovecraft Mythos.

Brain Lumley reads like a Reddit fanfiction version of Loveraft. It clumsily attempts to replicate the horror elements, while eschewing the very things that make Lovecraft so interesting - the exploration of archaic mysteries.

The first story I read took place in a mental asylum. The main character is an employee who is an aspiring writer - an obvious self insert of the author. The environment is so contrived that it feels designed to generate a cosmic horror.

Likewise, the second story “Born to the Winds” feels similarly contrived. The main character goes north. All exposition is clunky and obvious. The action was so predictable that it made the conclusion borderline comical.

Finally I skipped and read a story about a character called Titus Crow. He is a mary sue action hero inside of a Lovecraft-ish world. While the other two stories were simply boring and predictable, this one was outright cringy. Titus Crow somehow is a genius occultist who can escape and effortless beat anything that the mythos throws at him. Once again, a very predictable and clunky setup - creepy old man hires Crow to clean his library, and locks him into a haunted house.

I didn’t even finish the third story before I decided to quit while I was still ahead.

My conclusion is that Lumley’s short stories are to Lovecraft what Netflix Star Trek is to real Star Trek or Disney Star Wars is to real Star Wars. Tragic.

]]><![CDATA[The White Ship]]>Wed, 01 Apr 2026 10:39:55 GMThttp://www.thibaultserlet.com/book-reviews/the-white-ship

The White Ship: Conquest, Anarchy and the Wrecking of Henry I’s Dream
By Charles Spencer
Published in September 2020
352 Pages
Thibault’s Score: 4/5

William the Conqueror was a military genius, but struggled to build a stable government in England. He had some flashes of brilliance with institutions like the Domesday Book, but was neither outstandingly good or bad. His successors - William Rufus in England and Robert Curthose in Normandy - were particularly incompetent. They destroyed everything that William the Conqueror had built up during their short reigns.

Luckily, William the Conqueror’s third son - Henry (later Henry 1) - turned out to be an absolute genius.

Henry 1 had a hard start in life. Immediately, he was seen as a third party in between the conflict between his two brothers over the estate of his father. He spent his early years at war, in prison, in servile roles, and briefly even as a beggar. Thanks to a series of unexpected reversals, he ultimately was able to claw his way back to power and seize the crown of England.

Militarily, Henry 1 was able to defeat his loser siblings, as well as put down various rebellions. He re-unified the realm of his father, reigning over both Normandy and England at the same time. In his entire reign, he only lost a single battle.

Economically, Henry’s reign was also marked by brilliance. He created the institution of the exchequer - a centralized treasury that controlled the kingdom’s finances, managed taxation, and rooted out corruption. The name exchequer comes from a literal chequerboard. Accountants would lay out a chequerboard with the outlines of different coins. Sheriffs and other officials would be required to place coins on the chequerboard, and the accountants could quickly visually count the coins.

Henry’s economic reforms came with three incredible benefits, which resulted in rapid economic growth. First, it reduced corruption. Stealing money became much more difficult. Second, the increased revenues allowed him to lower taxes. Finally, this system of accounting allowed for longer term planning rather than ad hoc planning.

Henry also passed many important legal reforms. Previously, trials by jury had existed customarily, especially in areas that came under Viking influence. However, Henry formalized the institution, planting the seeds that would result in our modern Anglo-American common law system of jury trials. He also created something called the Charter of Liberties which enshrined property rights, also forming the basis of common law property rights.

Henry’s incredible reign was marked by a shadow. Like many great men, he rotted from the loins up. He only had a single legitimate son - William Ætheling. He had a legitimate daughter, Mathilda. Mostly prior to being King, but also subsequently, he had numerous mistresses and fathered at least 23 illegitimate children.

The disaster would come when his heir apparent, William Ætheling, was a young man towards the end of Henry’s reign. William Ætheling had a party boat known as “the white ship.” This boat would sail in between England and Normandy, and was the site of heavy drinking and debauchery. In November 1120, the White Ship sank, possibly due to a drunken accident. Only two men survived by clinging to wreckage and swimming to the coast of Normandy. William Ætheling, along with his entire generation of nobility, died overnight. Stricken by grief, Henry died shortly later while on a military campaign against France.

With no legitimate heir, but many bastards, the entire realm descended into a period of civil war known as “the Anarchy.” The Welsh, Scots, French, and Irish made significant advances, resulting in massive territorial losses for the English on all fronts. Different lords and nobles all claimed the throne. The economy was completely destroyed. All of Henry’s brilliant reforms were nearly forgotten. The anarchy would last until 1153, when the grandson of Henry 1 via his legitimate daughter Mathilda - Henry II - would manage to seize control of the throne.

Henry II, with his wife Aliénor of Aquitaine, managed to restore the reign. Henry II re-implemented many of Henry I’s reforms, stabilizing the realm.

This is a fascinating period of history. I am pretty well versed in early Norman history, so found the book enjoyable. It is hard for me to gauge how interesting this book will be to someone who isn’t knowledgeable or interested in the period. Overall, I would recommend it to someone curious about this specific time. I especially enjoyed the many tidbits that cover economic history.

]]><![CDATA[Imminent: Inside the Pentagon's Hunt for UFOs]]>Sat, 21 Mar 2026 08:25:58 GMThttp://www.thibaultserlet.com/book-reviews/imminent-inside-the-pentagons-hunt-for-ufos

Imminent: Inside the Pentagon's Hunt for UFOs
By Luis Elizondo
Published in August 2024
304 Pages
Thibault’s Score: 4/5

Imminent is a book written by a Pentagon whistleblower which attempts to explain the various US government efforts to track UFOs and UAPs.

Luis Elizondo is the whistleblower who leaked the famous “Gimble” and “Gofast” videos to the New York Times in 2017. He also publicized the government's AATIP program as well as several other government funded anti UAP and UFO initiatives.

Luis Elizondo has a fascinating background. He is the son of a former Cuban communist revolutionary, who eventually was betrayed by the Castro regime. Luis’ father was detained in one of Castro’s concentration camps, but eventually escaped and fought alongside the CIA during the Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba.

Luis later served in the US army in Korea and Kuwait. Later, he served as a CIA paramilitary officer doing counter-intelligence operations in a variety of countries around the world ranging from the Middle East to South America. During his time working on black ops, he claims that he was trained to use parapsychology and remote viewing. Due to budget cuts, however, he was never actively deployed as a psionic.

Two kids and one marriage later, he decided to retire from the field in exchange for a calmer bureaucratic career in Washington DC. After a decade working various civilian military intelligence jobs in DC, he was eventually recruited to join the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (or AATIP).

AATIP is a US government program to gather and attempt to explain hundreds of sensor readings, videos, accounts, and other pieces of data that could be UFOs / UAPs. For more than a decade, the US government secretly collected a very large body concerning UFOs during the late 2000s and early 2010s. AATIP’s existence was later confirmed in various declassification hearings.

After reading this book, I am now 100% convinced that, at the very least, people at high levels in the American military are convinced that extraterrestrials exist and are visiting earth. The Pentagon consensus is that these extraterrestrials are hostile and planning an invasion.

I am personally unsure what to believe. Reading this book has tipped me more to the side that UFOs are both real and currently visiting earth. The conclusions that many in the Pentagon have come to - that the UFOs are hostile - to me seems wrong. If they were truly planning an invasion, then anyone capable of interstellar travel could easily have already wiped us out or enslaved us. I suspect that the aliens, if real, are either simply studying and observing us or actively protecting the human race.

This is a very interesting book that I recommend to anyone interested in learning more about UFOs and UAPs. It might be a good second or third book to read about the topic.

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