Reviews for History of Alabama, for Use in Schools and for General Reading

The average rating for History of Alabama, for Use in Schools and for General Reading based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2021-06-03 00:00:00 Mary M. Ruprecht The Heroines of History is a collection of short biographies depicting prominent female historical figures: Marie Antoinette, Catherine II of Russia, Elizabeth I of England (here "Elizabeth of England", as the book predates Elizabeth II), Isabella of Castile, Joan of Arc, Maria Theresa, Mary of Scotland, Cleopatra, Madame Roland, and Josephine Bonaparte. It is nominally authored by John S. Jenkins, though he died before completing the work and it was finished according to his wishes and instructions. I picked up the Librivox recording because I'd just been going through some history-related podcasts and had become interested in the stories of some of these ladies. It was also something that broke up conveniently into small segments to be listened to while I worked. Although some of the biographies are read by more than one person, most are presented by a single reader, which enhances the feeling of reading a small collection rather than a single volume. It was an interesting read, but I would hesitate to recommend it as an actual source of reliable information as opposed to reading for entertainment. There is a heavy bias in most sections, sometimes for and sometimes against the subject, that troubles me somewhat. Perhaps Marie Antoinette really was that innocent and Catherine the Great really was that horrible, but it's one thing to imply that through presentation of facts and another to explicitly tell your audience how these women should be perceived. For example, Isabella of Castile is given a free pass on the Spanish Inquisition because: "Had [she] been left to her own judgement, she would have used milder means to root out heresy from her kingdom; but actuated by her early teachers, who impressed her with the duty of thorough action and influenced by her confessor Talevera, she countenanced the proceedings of the Spanish Inquisition." It isn't her fault, she's a good girl, really; it was the Catholic Church that made her go against her own sweet nature! The horror of the Inquisition, the conquest of the Muslims, and the expulsion of the Jews from Spain is not softened, but Isabella is excused from personal responsibility for any of it and the Church blamed for influencing her to ignore her conscience on the subject of religious tolerance at every turn. By contrast, we are assured many times over that Elizabeth of England was a selfish tyrannical capricious coquette who actually contributed nothing to the age that bears her name, but the major evidence of her self-centeredness and the ways in which England's golden age was brought about by other people than its reigning monarch is considered too well-known to bother presenting it. When I say the bias is easy to detect, I mean it kind of smacks you upside the head and refuses not to be detected. I suspect that one would be better off to find other full-length works dealing with the specific women in whom one is interested, if one is concerned with neutral and objective reporting. If one is looking for public-domain true-ish stories of politics and intrigue, though, this may be worth picking up. The bias is generally easy to detect, making it also easy to compensate for, and of course one can always use it as a jumping-off point for further reading. Four stars for being entertaining, but my rating gets knocked down because it's more skewed to entertainment and less skewed toward actually imparting factual information than a work like this should be.

Review # 2 was written on 2021-05-14 00:00:00 Brock Smith This book was written 170+ years, which explains part of the set up, language and interpretation that is currently no longer supported. And I liked to discover a book that old that celebrated women throughout history. But I also felt it was riddled with bias: the writer clearly did not like Catherine the Great, she is desribed as the devil incarnated, while for instance Isabel of Spain is excused for most of the terrible things she did. I am not sure where this stems from, but it did bother me.