"BOOK CHALLENGE" Topic

I see the bug got my original post. OK here goes again.
Dear List

Here's a challenge we recently had on Society of Daisy.

A friend comes to you, who he knows to be versed in the history of a period and asks you to recommend three books on the general history of the period, NOT SOLELY THE MLITARY DIMENSION. He is talking about the whole cultural and historical panorama. Your task is to recommend three books to him that will give him a good general grounding in the period. The periods are shown below, you can chose one period, or more than one or all of them. REMEMBER, it is something to give him a good grasp of the whole period and not something highly specialized, like war. You can use a two volume set for an entry, but not a multiple series like "The Cambridge History of the Modern World" or Will and Ariel Durant.

1. The Ancient World.
2. The Mediaeval Age
3. The Renaissance.
4. The Seventeenth Century
5. The Eighteenth Century
6. The Nineteenth Century
7. The Twentieth Century.

Remember you have to cover MOST of the period and get as much in as you can, AND one of them should be a source source written in the period, Except of course for the twentieth century as we all are moderns and have been reared on the literature and culture of the period. Yes, I have emphasized primarily here Western History. To do elsewise would make the contest impossible.

Lets see if it worked

All Periods
William Langer. An Encyclopedia of World History

5.18th
Jeremy Black (ed) Eighteenth Century Europe
Jennifer Pitts, A Turn to Empire
Rabb, The Struggle for Stability in Early Modern Europe

6.19th
T.C.W Blanning (ed) The Nineteenth Century
Albjerg and Albjerg, From Sedan to Stressa
Karl Marx, Das Kapital

I doubt that there is a contemporary source for the Medieval 'age' that would class as 'history' in any modern sense of the word. Even for the ancient world it would be difficult.

Actually for the starting primer, the Cambridge History series is exactly where I would start. Other than that in all honesty, too much happened to be more than peripherally covered by a volume per era.

Besides the Cambridge Histories – would recommend one of the Atlases of World History out there

For the Middle Ages

The first work is Normal Cantor's "The Civilization of the Middle Ages" which you probably all have in your libraries as it was one of the 99 cent choices you could make as a come-on to join the History book Club. This book is great, and if there is ANY criticism of it, it is that "there's too much meat in that sausage." Cantor covers it all and the only lacunae I can find is that he does not have a general survey chapter of the politics of the Middle Ages. This is quite understandable. It is impossible to write one. There is no central thread of what makes Mediaeval civilization tick as there is with Rome, and there is just too much to cover. Besides you can get that anywhere. The key is that Cantor shows the major elements of that medieval civilization and does so in a way that is easily accessible. The "Oxbridge" series of any sort is just too much, too fragmented and too large for anyone to assume they will read it.

The second is again by Norman Cantor and it is his 'Inventing the Middle Ages." This is a book which has two halves written simultaneously. It is a history of "the inventing" of the Middle Ages by the major medievalists of the 19th and 20th century, AND after telling all the details (some of them quite juicy) o the medievalist,s he surveys their work and lays out their thought and in effect ties in with Cantor's Civilization of the Middle Ages, and how these theories and elements were derived. it is fascinating and extremely lively. It's like hearing about all the crazy characters that come over for Thanksgiving dinner at your place every year. The chapters or sections are divided thematically with wonderful titles like "The Nazi Twins (one of whom was Jewish and the other became the official historian of Adolf Hitler) , the French Jews (who was and who was NOT a genuine member of he resistance) , the Oxford Fantasts (everything you wanted to know about C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkein) and "Anerican Pie" about the growth of medieval studies in America. This book is also vital for it provides a good forensic course on how history works, and how much of it is driven by academic politics and personal agendas (at times). "Inventing" is also a wonderful vehicle to understand historical exegisis and the major trends and philosophies of history about the Middle Ages.

The third book I would chose would be Tolkein's Lord of the Rings. This may seem extravagantly oddball, especially for me who general disparages fiction. However as Cantor tells us in "Inventing" what Tolkein was writing here was not a fantasy story or a novel, but a medieval epic TRANSLATED iINTO MODERN ENGLISH so that we could know and experience it in the same way as the medieval mind experienced his own epic. Tolkein, a classic master of languages and classical philologist created his languages of Middle Earth based on long dead dialects of Western England, of which only a few shreds have come down to us, and then wrote the whole thing to make us experience the same emotions and touchsones without attempt to make US into medieval people and forcing us to use a sort of backward jumbling "Yoda speak." Read the half dozen pages of explication by Cantor in Inventing and you will see that it all fits, and this is what Tolkein himself said he wanted to do. There is no allegory, no message, no coda where he is castigating or lionizing any presentist ideology. It is a simple love of language and a love for the medieval mind set I thought of using William Sterns Davis "Life on a Medieval Barony" from 1923. and while that is excellent, it never transcends it's "You are there" tourism, and I fell for Tolkeins deep seated soul stirring vision of the hero, (yes even little people can be heroes) of Tolkein. One might in this vein point out the "Everyman and Medieval mystery plays which toss shepherds and common men into the forefront as persons to whom life is just as precious, just as fraught, as the elites. But Tolkein makes it a lot easier, provided you remember what HIS purpose in writing it was.

Remember the aim was to give the newbie a general "grounding" in the period, not make him a full fledged scholar.

Let me ask those who talked of the Cambridge histories. Have YOU ever read them? I have.

Though a bit dated Durant's "Story of Civilian" might be useful as it covers most of the eras listed in its 11 volumes.

Otto – none of those were written during the middle ages, I thought that you said one volume had to be to meet your criteria.

I wouldn't think a 2nd work by the same author would be particularly useful, ideally you want a different viewpoint to allow comparison.

While all you say about Tolkien's intentions are true, I think the 3rd choice is more than a bit daft.

The second work by cantor is useful in introducing the newbie to the various schools of interpretation of history and how the preconditions of the author shape the work. It gives an excellent view of he exegesis of texts.

the problem with medieval literature is that it is so arcane to us, and the words are so different. Even something like Chaucer or "Medieval Mystery plays" are very opaque to us and difficult for the newbie to get into. Heck, so is Shakespeare! Daft it may be but after reading it several times, you can see the Medeival mindset in there as Tolkein put it in.

The second work is NOt about the Middle Ages, it is about the schools of thought about theMiddle Ages. Read it, it's one of the best books about the trends of thought of this very different and alien time from our own.

Norm Davies – Europe

Rather enjoying HG Wells Short History of the World at the moment.

Greatly out-dated, but each chapter pushes world history along and at the moment I'm enjoying re-reading Wells retelling about how Babylonian and Sumerian local city gods got stuffed by the invisible personal gods as well as the Egyptian and Roman living gods. Boy, do we humans have a strange history.