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60+ Works 1,232 Members 6 Reviews

About the Author

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Series

Works by Mark Kishlansky

Civilization in the West (1991) 53 copies
The Western World (2002) 19 copies
Civilization in the west (1993) 6 copies
Saye What? 1 copy
WESTERN WORLD >CUSTOM (2008) 1 copy
Study Guide: v. 1 (2002) 1 copy

Associated Works

The Origins Of Anglo-American Radicalism (1984) — Contributor — 17 copies

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Common Knowledge

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Reviews

Mark Kishlansky offers and excellent survey volume of the Stuart Dynasty in England - the seventeenth century. As a survey, he obviously does not delve into great detail, but he does a very good job discussing both personalities that moved the age and the great events that shook the age. I felt that many times I wanted more detail, but that is not the intent of this book. Rather, Kishlansky is trying to give an over-view of the age. This book provides a good foundation upon which to build one's knowledge by seeking out more specialised studies.

The writing style is clear and concise, especially as he tries to untangle the myriad religious issues and conflicts of the age. Kishlansky opens each chapter with a tantalising event relative to that chapter. This captures the reader's attention and keeps one focused on the theme of that chapter. Its a technique that works well within the context of a survey history.

I would have liked to have had endnotes, but Kishlansky advises the reader at the outset that he is not providing them. There is a very good section for further reading at the back of the book. On the whole, this is a great book for someone just beginning to explore the Stuart Dynasty in England.
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Blythewood | 4 other reviews | Sep 30, 2022 |
A good introduction to the first civilaztions and thier political, economical and family structures. My version was split into two volumes. The first one covered Prehistoric Europe to the rise of Christianity. The second which I am currently reading covers the Rise of Islam through 1715. I love the narrative and the maps provided in the book. The writing is down to earth and doesn't shy away from the horrible things humans do to each other. Each chapter ends with futher resources and most of them provide additional history or information that is really well thought out and useful.… (more)
 
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AnnaHernandez | Oct 17, 2019 |
I sometimes think that my love of 'Penguin History of x' series is straight masochism; but Kishlansky's volume on seventeenth century Britain is very well done. He writes clearly, his sentences follow on from each other (not always the case with today's historians), and he seems to have written for people who are interested in history, rather than for professors who need a text-book for an era they know little about: this book is not about settling scores with other professors.

The book focuses mainly on narrating the Main Story of the times, but it does start with a couple of chapters on social and political structures. He's also a good bibliographer, giving you plenty of options for further reading. The only real caveat is that the book is probably better for someone who already knows that, e.g., there was an English Revolution and so on. Kishlansky does a great job of showing how and why things happened, and he doesn't focus on any particular set of causes over any other. I'm not sure how good he is at making sure you know who Cromwell is before launching into the events of the age.… (more)
 
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stillatim | 4 other reviews | Dec 29, 2013 |
I read this book several months ago, and don’t remember many of the details of the individual narratives, but these are some general impressions on finishing the book.

This is the sixth volume in the (so far) ten-volume Penguin History of Britain series. As with many of these, this was a bit of a slog. I don’t know why I keep doing this to myself. The author, Mark Kishlansky, professor of English and English History at Harvard, seems eminently qualified to make this an engaging book, but it really isn’t. Some reviews have referred to this as a good “undergraduate history” of the Stuart period, and that may be the case; I would only want to read it in a class where information was also pulled together in a more compelling way.

A period that was so riven by political and social conflict should, perhaps, be handled with that kind of history. I have always been more interested in intellectual and cultural history, which this volume (and, it seems, most volume in this series) ignores, though I’ve tried not to fault it for that in my rating. A reader who asks herself, at the end of the book, “How was the monarchy transformed?” would have a difficult time answering the question precisely because of the way Kishlansky wrote the book: as a series of vivid vignettes full of vibrant personalities. The changes that happened to the important institutions, however, are much less apparent.
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kant1066 | 4 other reviews | Feb 25, 2013 |

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