Reviews for Hastening toward Prague

The average rating for Hastening toward Prague based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-12-19 00:00:00 Roy Tampubolon There's been a lot of revision over the years of "feudalism" as a historical concept, mostly since, like a lot of broadband euphemisms it doesn't really hold water once you actually start studying things. "Hastening" is a similar contribution to Central European history, but less about feudalism and more about how absolute things like rule and church power were not. If I could cleverly condense down the idea of this book, it'd be something like "They were leaders and not lords." Rule wasn't absolute, it was based on a pretty neat and astonishingly democratic give-and-take between whoever was in power at the time and various "freemen" to use Wolverton's term (really just local power-holders), not Fremen. Basically, a poor leader would be "insufficiently tolerated" if he was found wanting, and loyalties could easily shift. Wolverton approaches this through studying a few somewhat nuanced features of Bohemia, and to a lesser extent, Moravia: the cult of Vaclav, the role of the Church, the centrality of Prague, and the invocation of nominal imperial power to get folks to "hasten to Prague", basically, to fight for a guy. Not the best choice for the lay reader to gain entry into medieval Czech history, it's dense and packed with fun-facts, but there is so little on the subject that you may as well!

Review # 2 was written on 2012-08-16 00:00:00 John Demeza strangely compelling little book - the voices of the ill treated and dispossessed echoing over 850 years...the taking of peasants' pigs, wives, only cow.... of beatings and cheatings. Micro history at its best.