Reviews for A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind & the Renaissance - Portrait of an Age

The average rating for A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind & the Renaissance - Portrait of an Age based on 2 reviews is 1 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2007-08-04 00:00:00 William M Cromer I didn't finish this book. As I basically study the middle ages, all the information was not new or its credibility was highly questionable. Seriously, this guy HATES the middle ages and this book is a one sided rant on how completely dumb and primitive the people were before the Rennaissance saved everyone. One such random fact that the author gets stuck on is that silverware wasn't introduced until the end of the 16th (maybe 15th...errr) century. Gasp! How can they be so uncivilized??? Using their hands to eat? There seem to be plenty of world cultures that get along fine today using their hands as utensils... Basically, a civilization that doesn't strive for progress for the sake of progress is not worthy of existing. Granted, lots of external things lead up to the supposed stoppage in progress...plagues, famines, the collapse of rome. Yet, most of Europe, while part of the Roman empire, never had the technology that Rome was known for. Most importantly, in his one sided attack, he gloriously praises people like Magellan for proving that the world was round (even though people had known this for centuries) while completely glossing over the nameless people of the middle ages who also strove for progress. Their namelessness, to him, makes them less worthy. Still, learning went on in monasteries if of a different kind than today. He even slights the great cathedrals built by these nameless workers despite the new discoveries in architecture that have kept them standing even today. Ok...I could go on...but I'm gonna stop.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-07-16 00:00:00 Michael Woods I haven't read anything else by William Manchester, but he's a good writer, and I'm sure he's a smart guy. He's written several biographies on Churchill, and one on JFK, and a memoir detailing his experiences during World War II in the Pacific. But Manchester is a reporter and a chronicler of modern history, and his rather sudden attempt to catalogue the medieval and early modern era in about three hundred pages is - at best - a very misguided effort that paints a terribly artificial and superficial picture of the Middle Ages. At worst, it's a willfully ignorant piece of polemic that, despite the title of his book's first section, makes absolutely no attempt at truly understanding the medieval mind. The problem boils down to the fact that there wasn't nearly enough research done by the author to allow him to write a book like this. Apparently, Manchester literally wrote this book as he was researching it, and based it entirely on secondary literature. Instead of spending a few years researching and getting a feel for the era, the complexities and viewpoints and the historically fuzzy spots, he just sat down, picked up some (often outdated) secondary sources and wrote a book as he was reading them. It would be one thing if Manchester had simply come to his conclusions through genuine scholarship. It's certainly a conclusion you could make from looking at some medieval primary sources, though I'd argue it's a superficial one. But Manchester doesn't bother. And the idea of writing a history book that spans about 1200 years without picking up a primary source is, honestly, kind of reprehensible to me. It's not that Manchester misinterpreted these people, it's that he seemed to genuinely not particularly care how they viewed their own world, at least not enough to pick up a book and read a few of their own words. To write a general history book on an era that spanned a millennium and then to harshly condemn that era without reading a primary source written by the people who lived through it is genuinely irresponsible. Early on, Manchester makes the kind of astounding statement that "in the medieval mind, there was no conception of time." In microcosm, that represents everything that is wrong with this book. On a superficial level, sure, there's some truth in the statement - people didn't keep track of time in the same way that we do today. But the idea that a predominantly agricultural society had no conception of time doesn't make any kind of logical sense, and from a theological or philosophical standpoint, it's hugely wrong, and once again serves to show that Manchester seems entirely unaware of the underpinnings of the era. And when you're writing a history book like this one, that's exactly what you need to get right.