Great introduction to major themes

It seemed that my very general North American education simply skipped over the medieval period in Europe, as it did for so much of world history. This book was a wonderful introduction to some major themes in medieval European history. I will go on to explore more specific areas touched on in greater detail. I listened to this before going to sleep, and the narrator’s voice was pleasant and relaxing. So I generally had to listen to many segments over again the next night. However, it made for a pleasant and relaxing introduction to a historical period I only knew of as the “Dark Ages”.

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1 person found this helpful

Pretty Good Historical Overview w/ a Few Problems

First let me say that I really enjoyed the book. It provides a very good broad overview of the Middle Ages from the decline of Rome onward. That said I think any prospective listener should be aware of a few issues I found with the book and the author's focus.

1) An almost incessant and grating reference to future chapters throughout. At points it seemed every paragraph was capped with a 'see chapter X for more on this'. The book follows a pretty logical structure, and I found these at first simply useless and redundant, but eventually irritating and wasted effort on the narrator's part. I enjoy listening to these books while working on the lawn or house or doing manual labour. I, nor many others I doubt, will be pausing midway through a chapter to jump ahead three or four and then jump back. It's just nonsensical and these references contributed very little and quickly became an annoyance.

2)The author's focus is very heavily slanted towards political power structures and economic development. To the point that he often ignores or simply glosses things like linguistics, ethnicity and genetic evidence, and physical culture. This has implications in his view of medieval Europe, such as when he argues against the existence of anything we could conceptually call a cultural Europe due to a lack of political and trade links. This completely ignores social structures, ethnicity and language, shared physical culture and design we find in gravegoods, etc. Or when discussing the pre-Christian religions and pre-Feudal social structures of Northern Europe, he seems to contradict, gloss or ignore the fact that many of these cultures were very closely related through their common Indo-European ancestry and languages. Instead he claims that the religions were a hodge podge and unrelated, or that the political/economic hierarchies of these decentralized regions were stemmed mostly from circumstance and environment, rather then a connected worldview/social structure. There is no acknowledgement that though these people may not have had the political/economic ties with southern Europe that Arabs, Turks, North Africans, etc did, that they still shared common traits that made them 'cousins'.

3) Although I laud him for his care to not frame the motivations of medieval Christians or Muslims through a modern lense, and attempts to take their peity and motivations as genuine and not simple opportunism, he does exactly this when discussing pre-Christian polities and actors. In his discussion of the Christianization of Northern Europe, the decisions to either embrace conversion or resist are framed as opportunist political moves by those who simply want to tap into or shield themselves from the imperial power and hegemony of Francia and broader Christendom. This is a topic that is rarely discussed in detail, and while his timeline and provided anecdotes were interesting, there was little discussion of alternate motives that may have played on these peoples minds.

Again, overall I found it a really interesting book and the wide coverage including Byzantium and Eastern Europe was refreshing and informative, as this often isn't covered in Western European focused books. Worth a listen, just be aware of the authors biases/focus.

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3 people found this helpful

Great historical survey

Chris Wickham is one of the greatest medievalist alive. His commitment to the historical materialist methodology provides the grounds for one of the most insightful studies of the MiddleAges. While his definition of labour classes is problematic as critiqued by Jairus Banaji this book will be a great listen to those interested in the strengths of a historical materialist read of the Middle Ages.

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Excellent survey of Medieval history by an accomplished scholars

A solid overview of a millenium of history, that still manages to offer ground-level details that impart color and nuance.

By no means “light reading,” but still accessible for anyone with more than a passing interest in the period.

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A well crafted overview of some 500 years of history

I have listened to other works about the time period covered here, attended classes on the same and otherwise was .. lets say nodding acquaintances with the people and events covered here. For the most part there are no deep dives into any one time/place/event but rather a brush that feathered them into each other to give a review of the scope.
Indeed each of the chapters could (and has) been a book or course all on it’s own but this work’s strength is the way it brings a thread of progress to the whole while acknowledging that much of that is coming from hindsight and wasn’t a planned outcome of the people at the time.

I enjoyed the approach and the author’s skill and shall seek more by the same.

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1 person found this helpful

Factual, but does not flow well at all.

The authors choice if how to divide up the subjects provides some interesting new perspectives, looking at the loss and accumulation of centralized authority, taxation and how that connects with conflict and religion were a different approach. That being said, the book reads more like a textbook, and it’s NOT very interesting overall.

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Names and numbers

The author hints at interesting developments in the period covered but does not derail these developments in any relatable way.
He drops names and dates and makes blanket statements that are continually hedged with “although” and “however”. The effect is very thin. He writes in compound clauses that confuse the waffling even more.

Too bad, I really wanted to find it interesting but could not tolerate all the vagueness.

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Informative.. but Dry. Painfully Dry.

This book is ambitious: it tries to tackle the political/economic/cultural development of the Western World over 1000 years (500AD - 1500AD). In that, it's remarkably successful. Unfortunately, Oxford Professor Emeritus Chris Wickham also states at the outset of the book that he intends to write for a casual audience, but largely fails in that goal. What we get instead is a survey (extensive and full of cross-references but still a survey) that's a little bit too academic to satisfy the public and a little too cursory to satisfy scholars.
To his credit, Wickham writes with commendable prose & vocabulary, presents an authoritative case with defensible posits, and generates a logical, syllabus-quality organization.. but much of the topic discussed is frankly mind-numbingly boring.

Derek Perkins reads very professionally with enough emotiveness to blunt some of the yawn-worthy aspects of the text. His diction, cadence, timbre, and tone are spot-on. Blackstone Audio did well to cast Perkins for the project and provide creditable technical support.

Some readers may be looking for an audio textbook - and will likely be disappointed with Wickham's approach in this book. I, however, was looking for a more commercial presentation - and 'Medieval Europe' isn't that either.

I rate the book 4 stars out of 10. It's a fair listen for some interesting facts, but doesn't bring a fascinating segment of history to life by any means. If you can get it for free - as I did - it's not crazy to give it a try, but this book is not worth money if they ask you for it.

ATTN PRODUCERS: This product would be improved considerably with a PDF Appendix/Maps/Timeline.

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1 person found this helpful

Woke and Dull

I learned very little new info from this book. The text content is too woke for my taste and I struggled to finish. There is nothing fun or entertaining in the text or the performance, no good stories.

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