Thibault Serlet
  • Home
  • Book Reviews
  • Contact

Articles

​

Medieval Europe

3/6/2020

0 Comments

 
Picture
Medieval Europe
By Chris Wickham
Published in November 2016
352 Pages
Thibault’s Score: 2/5

Medieval Europe is a survey history that focuses on institutional change in Europe from 500 until 1500. Due to its brevity, this book does not focus on the specifics, but rather on broad trends shaping states and social institutions.

I didn’t really like this book that much. First, I found that the information was too basic for me, because I have been studying the Middle Ages in depth for several years. However, I also think that this book is likely to be too complicated and too uninteresting for a neophyte who doesn’t have any background in the Middle Ages.

Chris Wickham’s writing style doesn’t jive well with me either. He makes many arguments to “go against” popular or academic conceptions of the Middle Ages. I don’t really care about oppositional statements, and find them very off putting in historical works like this.

The book had a lot of boring sections. Part of this is because the book is neither a narrative or a historiographical treatise. Narrative histories are less accurate and more prone to legends, but are interesting as they have characters and motives. Historiographical histories focus more on the methods of text analysis and archaeology, and are very intellectually stimulating. 

This book does not cover many specific narratives as it is only intended to serve as a very broad survey. It also doesn’t cover the methods of historians and archeology.

I thought it was a pretty boring and very milktoast book which doesn’t have very many gems hidden in it. My recommendation is for readers to skip it entirely.

I did not finish the book, only made it roughly two thirds until the end before I put it down.
0 Comments

    Thibault Serlet

    Most of my articles are book reviews, but I also write about many other topics.

    Archives

    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • Book Reviews
  • Contact