Reviews for No Ordinary Man: The Life and Times of Miguel de Cervantes

The average rating for No Ordinary Man: The Life and Times of Miguel de Cervantes based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-09-13 00:00:00 Christopher Saylor As any good biographer/scholar would do, McCrory takes all Cervantine studies and synthesizes them with his own research and ideas, while also pointing out the failures (i.e. conjectures) and successes of his scholarly forebears. A good primer for the trajectory of a genius who offers the world an enduring masterpiece despite setback after setback.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-08-09 00:00:00 Josh Canter Sadly, Cervantes left no autobiography and few personal letters giving his side of events, so McCrory has to rely on court records, loan dunnings, pleas to the Spanish court and the long legal tangles of his extended family to reconstruct the world of Miguel de Cervantes, which saw the terminal decline of Spain amidst its imperial ventures. Cervantes' time in Spanish military service, including Lepanto, his defiant captivity in Algiers, the stint at tax collecting in preparation for the 1588 Armada, his independent sisters and their sexual relationships calculated to help family finances, the strained relationship with the Church, the shifting agriculture of the small town where Cervantes married into a shabby noble family, all of this should be riveting in the way other microhistory reconstructions have been, but McCrory is assembling, rather than reanimating, and the results were informative, but not inspiring or particularly thoughtful.