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Books: God's Crucible (again)
Feb. 1st, 2009 09:42 amOverall, I am enjoying this book as much as can be expected given that it is "regular" history - i.e. pretty much about battles, famous people, and so forth (at least in the first 170 odd pages). Social history is more my thing, but I've noticed that in English-language popular history you pretty much get to choose: traditional history about untraditional topics, or social history about traditional topics, but not social history about untraditional topics. There is plenty of that in academic writing of course, but you're not going to find it browsing the average chain bookstore shelf.
And there is this really awesome sentence that I've now hit for the second time, in what I suspect is its original home in the text (it shows up in the author's introduction as well, and is by far my favorite sentence in the book to date, both times I read it). The prefatory version is the one where the author really lets himself go with the subclauses though:
God's Crucible, xxiii:
"God's Crucible engages a perspective rarely addressed by the scholarship about Europe's long age of Islamo-Christian cohabitation. In that perspective, the Battle of Poitiers and the Song of Roland are pivotal moments in the creation of an economically retarded, balkanized, and fratricidal Europe that, by defining itself in opposition to Islam, made virtues out of hereditary aristocracy, persecutory religious intolerance, cultural particularism, and perpetual war."
I've got some complaints about this book - the writing, for instance, is extremely academic at the oddest moments. I think the book could have benefited by being twice as long and taking the time to give us slightly longer character sketches of some people here and there. But overall, it's a pretty huge piece of brain pie for one guy to try to put together, and I'm finding it to be at the very least a useful web. Final judgement after I get to the bits where there's actually a settled al-Andalus. I'm really looking forwards to the bits with Maimonides, I cannot even say how much.
And there is this really awesome sentence that I've now hit for the second time, in what I suspect is its original home in the text (it shows up in the author's introduction as well, and is by far my favorite sentence in the book to date, both times I read it). The prefatory version is the one where the author really lets himself go with the subclauses though:
God's Crucible, xxiii:
"God's Crucible engages a perspective rarely addressed by the scholarship about Europe's long age of Islamo-Christian cohabitation. In that perspective, the Battle of Poitiers and the Song of Roland are pivotal moments in the creation of an economically retarded, balkanized, and fratricidal Europe that, by defining itself in opposition to Islam, made virtues out of hereditary aristocracy, persecutory religious intolerance, cultural particularism, and perpetual war."
I've got some complaints about this book - the writing, for instance, is extremely academic at the oddest moments. I think the book could have benefited by being twice as long and taking the time to give us slightly longer character sketches of some people here and there. But overall, it's a pretty huge piece of brain pie for one guy to try to put together, and I'm finding it to be at the very least a useful web. Final judgement after I get to the bits where there's actually a settled al-Andalus. I'm really looking forwards to the bits with Maimonides, I cannot even say how much.
