I will, as I am aiming to review a volume a week or so
Larry Send a noteboard - 01/11/2010 10:22:10 PM
His prolix writing style does begin to grate after a bit. By Volume IV I was thinking at times, "Just say it directly already!" Additionally, everything after Justinian and the restoration is subpar in quality. In my six-volume version, that was about halfway through Volume IV.
When he starts to talk about the Muslim rise and the Mongols, he just starts saying lots of things that aren't technically true, and of course as a lover of Byzantine I think he really did them a disservice.
You might want to note that he goes beyond the fall of Trebizond to talk about inconsequential urban politics in Rome (the city itself) in the Renaissance for a full sixty pages at least. It was tedious in the extreme to read.
When he starts to talk about the Muslim rise and the Mongols, he just starts saying lots of things that aren't technically true, and of course as a lover of Byzantine I think he really did them a disservice.
You might want to note that he goes beyond the fall of Trebizond to talk about inconsequential urban politics in Rome (the city itself) in the Renaissance for a full sixty pages at least. It was tedious in the extreme to read.
And yes, I'm fully expectant that there will be some tedium settling in shortly, although the parts on the martyrs early in vol. II I think is mostly excellent in the points made against received tradition/hagiography.
Thankfully, I have Norwich to balance out the Byzantines.
Illusions fall like the husk of a fruit, one after another, and the fruit is experience. - Narrator, Sylvie
Je suis méchant.
Je suis méchant.
Thoughts after reading Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. I
- 31/10/2010 09:57:56 PM
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Let me know your thoughts when you get farther into the series.
- 01/11/2010 03:08:56 PM
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I will, as I am aiming to review a volume a week or so
- 01/11/2010 10:22:10 PM
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I wasn't aware that "wie es eigentlich gewesen ist" was a historical term. 
- 01/11/2010 03:44:17 PM
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- 01/11/2010 03:44:17 PM
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I'm guessing you aren't too familiar with Leopold von Ranke? 
- 01/11/2010 10:23:09 PM
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- 01/11/2010 10:23:09 PM
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I'm afraid not, no.
- 01/11/2010 10:38:34 PM
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- 01/11/2010 10:38:34 PM
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Ranke founded the Historicist school; I was trained in part by a member of that school
- 01/11/2010 10:49:09 PM
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