Thomas F. Madden

I have fallen in love with ancient Venice thanks to this book. It was the oldest republic in the world, for 1300 years its people opposed a strong central government. The author destroys old myths about its “all-powerful” doges who were nothing of the sort. Doges were chosen by a process so complex no one of power could possibly influence it “other than God,” and were replaced easily. Not until Napoleon—who “forced” liberty on it (another myth because according to the author show more they were the most free people through antiquity)—did one man force the Venetians to erect a statue to one man in St Mark’s Square. Napoleon. It didn’t last long. Venice was formed when Romans escaped to its islands fleeing Attila the Hun. Because land was scarce, there was no landed gentry, and thus no nobility, unlike everywhere else in the ancient world. And yet the people were and are noble. An excellent book!!

By the way, the narrator was fantastic as well. I just don’t have enough praise for this book. While I’m not as enamored with Venice’s modern history (no fault of the author’s of course), I now cannot wait to see it in a few weeks!! show less

First of all this history book is a great supplement or even replacement for many highschool text books. Since it covers a tremendous amount of history and events, beyond just the city of Venice, it can be used as a good overview of power struggles and economic development in Europe from medieval days right up to our time.

This book's greatest strength is to provide context for events we're kind of familiar with but didn't really know how they are all connected. We typically see Venice as a show more place with a great flair for the theatrical, but how did that come to be? We also know Venice as an important sea port, but how did it fit in with all the other famous harbours?

Although I think this particular book does a better job of teaching history than other history books, I do believe it suffers from the same ailment many other such books suffer from. That defect is not keeping the reader informed as to where we are in time. Certainly times and dates are mentioned but the author will easily take a long diversion into a previous era without explaining how things are connected or even where the current discussion is situated.

The overarching feeling reading this book is that as a reader you're constantly wondering: "ok so where are we right now?" A side effect of this back-and-forth jumping is that you can't decide how to look at the time period currently being discussed. If I need to understand how an event in the 18th century relates to something that happened in the 17th century, then you would at a minimum expect sentences that start with: "Unlike in the 18th century, in the 17th century there were ...". Any linking text or dialog is completely missing here, which is the main reason I gave it 4 stars instead of 5. show less

A very good and engaging set of lectures about the medieval world that debunks a lot of common misconceptions about the era, about christianity, the inquisition. Madden goes over the religious issues that will continue to fracture the church down the ages (uneducated priests, heretical views), as well as the many monastic orders that it will draw from. You also get insights into the legal and economic changes toward a more distributed power system, a lot of it an unintended consequence from show more kingly abuses (the nobles open a door to regulating power that will continue to be built upon later), or the power vacuum of the plague opening the door for mobile peasants in a world screaming for workforce to renegotiate their position. I liked the discussion of the nebulous concept of feudalism as well. Lots to like here. show less

This book was not terribly analytical, but it does what it's supposed to: gives a broad narrative overview of the Crusades, to be used as a textbook. It was quite depressing to see how stupid we (Christians) could be, believing that God would deliver the Muslim enemy into our hands with little to no planning or training. Madden makes the point that the most obvious modern solution - not taking Jerusalem, but finding a way for all Abrahamic faiths to share it - was simply blasphemous to the show more medieval absolutist mind. What a great reminder of the narcissistic dangers of identifying any one group of people as God's chosen.

The best part of this book was the chapter on the legacy of the Crusades. Madden argues that despite decades of historical research on them, popular presentations of the Crusades ignore it. Contemporary Western ones, influenced heavily by [[Sir Steven Runciman]], see it as no more than a foolish war, motivated by misguided piety and pure evil. Muslim views exaggerate its importance, casting it as a massive devastation of the Islamic world. They forget that Islam was already powerful and these groups of crusading Europeans hardly constituted a threat to Islamic civilization. Both views are wrong. And despite public interest, post-9/11 comparisons between then and now are mostly unuseful. show less