Geoffrey Treasure (1929–2021)
Autor/a de The Huguenots
Sobre l'autor
Obres de Geoffrey Treasure
Who's who in British History: A-H 1 exemplars
Etiquetat
Coneixement comú
- Nom oficial
- Treasure, Geoffrey Russell Richards
- Altres noms
- TREASURE, Geoffrey Russell Richards
TREASURE, G. R. R. - Data de naixement
- 1929-12-16
- Data de defunció
- 2021-12-24
- Gènere
- male
Membres
Ressenyes
Potser també t'agrada
Estadístiques
- Obres
- 13
- Membres
- 358
- Popularitat
- #66,978
- Valoració
- 3.5
- Ressenyes
- 5
- ISBN
- 38
- Llengües
- 1
- Preferit
- 1
To his credit the author does actually recognize in the first six chapters (230 pages) that Europe between 1648 and 1780 can be studied from many perspectives. These chapters contain a reasonably informative general discussion of how society functioned in these centuries. It touches on the interaction between nobility and peasants, war, famine, poverty, economic production, religion and political organization. I can't say it belongs among the best analyses that I've read, but it was good enough to capture my attention and I generally enjoyed reading it.
But then the author turns to his main theme in this story about "The Making of Europe", which is a recapitulation of the deeds of various kings and queens who ruled the European lands in these centuries. He devotes about 400 pages to discuss what they (and sometimes their advisers and courtiers) did, and quite often also what they were like. The narrative is hopelessly boring and uninformative. The author assumes that the reader is already more or less familiar with all these persons and the various battles, religious disputes, rebellions and whatnot that occupied them in these centuries. He explains how these mighty men (and some women) reacted to the problems they faced.
Just to illustrate how confusing this is for the layman, the index of the book lists twelve different rulers named "Charles". I dare say it's pretty difficult to remember and understand who they all were as they pop up in the narrative here and there (unless you have devoted a few years of university studies to memorizing them). Each chapter deals with a specific country, but the author often adopts a confusing style of presentation where he jumps back and forth between different decades in the space of just a few paragraphs. I couldn't bear this for very long so I just browsed through the second half of the book quite quickly.
A big problem for an amateur history reader is that it's difficult to know which historians write wooden chronicles like this, and which ones actually help you understand something about the age in question. This particular author falls about 80% in the former camp and 20% in the latter.… (més)