Reviews for Tales of Early Franks: Episodes from Merovingian History

The average rating for Tales of Early Franks: Episodes from Merovingian History based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-06-22 00:00:00 Zachary Ares A little known fact is that federal judges are limited in the extra-judicial income they're permitted to earn. Earnings from lecturing and speaking are limited, as are earnings from trafficking narcotics and identity theft. With such commonplace avenues of remuneration foreclosed, federal judges who find themselves in need of additional cash must resign themselves to writing books. And as any student of judicial decision-writing knows, America's judges are masters of plagiarism. Indeed, in law plagiarism is not only acceptable, but deeply institutionalized (cite the incorrect buzz language, and your lawsuit can be thrown out). Judges frequently even plagiarize themselves as a matter of course; such is the mechanism of the common law. Richard Posner knows this. Hence he is too wily to craft original material for his money-making books, and he even gleefully acknowledges this fact in an eary chapter of Overcoming Law, which conists mostly of recylced law review articles, speeches, and lectures. Nonetheless, this collection of essays contains many gems. Posner's literary style is lucid and logical, and he approaches intellectual tasks with a transparency and doggedly methodical spirit that typifies that of the genuinely well-intentioned scholar. As Overcoming Law demonstrates, the rewards of such a work ethic are compelling. A characteristically brilliant example is his "economic" analysis of "homosexuality." In that essay, Posner methodically studies the nature of sexual behaviour and preference within the rubric of rational choice. The result is an enlightening, persuasive, and at times amusing acount of why people--who are commonly though to follow their emotions in all things sexual--actually behave in the most brutally rational way when it comes to love and sexuality. His conclusions are bound to be at once amusing and embarassingly revealing. Not every essay in this book is a dead ringer, but at least half of them are. Any free-thinking individual with a stomach for beginner-level, exploratory philosphizing will be enriched and delighted with this collection of provocative works.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-04-09 00:00:00 Ryan Crocker It was a little hard to follow, as the timeline sort of jumped back and forth, the author preferring to divide the history into "stories". I had to keep going back to see when this or that person was killed, or how Fredegund could have a fifteen year old son when two pages before the author had mentioned "her only son, born just two months prior" or whatever. Some of that might've been because this book was a translation. Beyond the timeline issues, though, I enjoyed this. I learned a lot more about the Merovingians; most of the stories contained in the book I'd never heard before anywhere. And it certainly shed light on this fascinating but often brutal and barbaric family - definitely not the "descended from Jesus, royal and noble" family that a certain Dan Brown novel would have you believe! Chilperic in particular made me furious. What a horrible, terrible bastard he was. How there isn't a TV series or book series about the Merovingians I will never know. There is so much to pull from!