Philip Parker (1)Besprekingen

Gorgeous book of the human history timeline. Good to pick up and learn a bit about history from time to time.

Széleskörű tudás rejtőzik ebben a csodálatos könyvben, amely az általános műveltség fejlesztésére és a történelmi tanulmányok kiegészítésére is alkalmas. Szeretne valamit megtudni egy országról? Ebben a rendkívül gazdag történelmi kiadványban egyszerűen megtalálhatja a választ kérdéseire. A kötet valamennyi földrész és ország történelmét feldolgozza - az időrendi táblázat és a tárgymutató segítségével pedig könnyedén megtalálja a kérdéses időszakot és helyet. Az 540 színvonalas szemléltető térképpel és a 150 fotóval áttekinthetővé válnak a történelem eseményei. (Bookline)

This was an excellently written book. You can see the time, effort, and detail put into making sure that all the information was clear and simply put.
I had a great time reading this book.
However, I gave this book four stars on the account that Chapter Eight — "The Modern World” — could have been broken into 2-3 smaller chapters; I now that this is more of a textbook style book, but 113 pages is one chapter is a little too much in my opinion.
Other than that, this is a really well done narrative of world history from the ancient past to the present day.

A book that tries to encompass the whole sweep of Viking history in under 400 pages is going to be packed with information. Philip Parker does an amazing job covering the geographic breadth of the Viking conquests while managing to put "Viking" into the context of early medieval history. But he tackles a subject matter so broad that it's bound to bog down in spots.

So just know that there are parts of the book that read really easily, and parts that can be a slog. The chapters on the Viking's origins, their myths and legends (and boats), the stories of Iceland, Greenland and North America were all excellent. The chapters on the Vikings in France and England, in Russia, and in the Byzantine Empire suffered from an overload of people's names, and place names, and battles here and there. At times it's overwhelming. I had to pause and re-read more than once in those chapters.

There are maps at the start of each chapter that are of some help in following the story, but many of the place names mentioned don't show up on the maps, which was somewhat frustrating.

Despite all of that I enjoyed the book and really learned a lot. For a small example, I had never heard of Greek Fire before reading this book, so now I know where the "wildfire" in the Game of Thrones comes from. For a larger example, I did not realize the geographical reach of the Vikings - through the whole of Europe, into Russia and down to Constantinople as well as north into Greenland, Iceland and east to North America. As "outsiders" to the rest of Europe who appeared "out of nowhere" in their "marauding ships" they struck terror - and that's the extent of what many of us know of them. This book helps provide a better understanding of who the Vikings were and what they accomplished.

A nicely done book. A large hardback on pretty good paper. Each map has it’s own page, or sometimes a detail in EXTREME CLOSE-UP with a double page spread of the whole thing overleaf. The reproductions seem to be the best available. There’s everything from pre-Roman trackways to EU referendum voting patterns, so as of 2020 all we’re missing is a Covid outbreak map. There’s the famous ones you’d expect to see like the Mappa Mundi and Beck’s Tube map mixed with some really obscure stuff that must be known only to specialists.

Particularly interesting for me was the Ambleside flood. This appears to be a screenshot from Magic, a GIS I used a lot when I did mapping for Defra. My favourite though must be the Post Roads. It reminds me of a pre-Beck Tube map I once saw where there was still some attempt to match actual geography. It’s well worth having a look at areas familiar to you. So Billericay (‘Billrecay’ here) is virtually a coastal town as there are no stops between there and Gravesend. And Newcastle Upon Tyne appears twice. Once on the Great North Road (with a branch line to Tynemouth, here shown inland) and again on the Coast Road for a separate route up to Berwick. Clever stuff.

Each map has a page of text that tells you a little about the map, the milieu in which it was produced and a little relevant narrative history. The book is perhaps designed to be browsed so it was only when I read it cover to cover that I realised the history is disjointed and sometimes repetitive. The text has been spell checked but not proofread and there are numerous instances of words being actual words, but not the right ones. Also, not everything is factually accurate. On page 246 we are told that “Daniel Defoe, the satirist and author of Gulliver’s Travels, was moved”. I’m sure he was. Many have been, but none more so that Jonathan Swift. Those problems aside, it’s the text which gives context and makes this into a book rather than a collection of pictures.

A good present for someone who likes maps.

When you hear the word Viking, you think of tall blond Scandinavian man with a horned helmet, an aggressive attitude, a round shield, a sword who has just stepped off a longboat. Most of those facts are right, apart from the horned helmet. These men came out of nowhere in the 8th century to wreak havoc and bloodshed across the lands of England, France and Ireland. People who lived close to seas and rivers were fearful for their very lives at the sight of a sail on the horizon.

Whilst they were bloodthirsty and brutal, they also possessed a sophisticated culture that was capable of subtle art, complex literature and had whose culture held for many hundreds of years. Not only that, they were expert sailors not only crossing the North Sea to the UK, but also sending ships to Shetland, the Faroes, Iceland Greenland and even to America, way before Columbus. Their influence crossed Europe too, as they navigated down the rivers they even reached Constantinople, played a fundamental part in the birth of Russia and came to dominate the politics of the continent.

In this interesting book book Parker has laid bare the Viking influence across Europe and the Atlantic ocean. They were a pretty brutal bunch, having no qualms about wholesale slaughter if needed, whilst having a strong belief in their gods and culture. There is plenty of details on the the various factions that settled in England and the battles between the various native tribes and the invaders. It does feel a little dry at times, but that is down to the immense amount of detail in the book scoured from the sagas, their stories and tales of myth and legend. Their influence on the UK is still felt today, with place names in certain parts of the country having Viking origins, as well as leaving a lasting genetic trail in the population. Good overall and worth reading if you like anything to do with history.

This book offers a history of the Viking world, and plots the growth and then diaspora of the various sub-groups encompassed by that term. They certainly made extensive forays, reaching eastwards into Russia, and even reaching Istanbul (known to them as Mikkelgard), while also reaching south to Normandy and Brittany, and southwest to Britain. Their voyages westwards are noiw well documented, though this account places greater emphasis than many on the failed colonisation of Greenland.

Parker has clearly researched his work deeply, and makes extensive use of the wealth of literary sources from Old and Middle English, Old Icelandic and Middle High German.

I felt, however, that his account seemed very dry. Considering the fascinating subject matter, he seemed to wring out any sense of excitement or wonder, and reduced his story to a very flat series of descriptions of rais, casualties and thefts.

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1922974.html

A fascinating travelogue around the ruins of the Roman Empire's frontiers, starting at Hadrian's Wall and ending at Septem, now the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, which was incidentally also the last Byzantine outpost in North Africa. Parker manages an admirable evenness of tone through some very different bits of territory, including debatable mounds in central Europe as well as the rose-red city half as old as time. Having finished Gibbon just a few months ago, I found Parker a useful adjunct; geographical clarity, especially at the margins, is not Gibbon's strong point, and Parker anyway has over two centuries' worth of further research and excavation to draw on. The geographical focus, however, does mean that Parker has to leap back and forth in the time line depending on when interesting things happened on the bit of frontier he has reached, and I would have found this confusing if I had not had Gibbon's narrative in my recent memory.

Parker makes the interesting overall point that we should not see the boundary fortifications as the border where Roman power stopped; the Empire's power was projected in both directions, and those beyond the limes might still be under Roman control (and in later times, those within the limes might not be). He concludes with admiration for the initial success and relative longevity of the Roman project, and sadness that it is unlikely to be repeated (which is a whole other debate, I think). There are some great evocative descriptions of ruins as perceived by today's traveller and resident, and some nice historical and archaeological points (eg the soldiers found dead in their fortress in Germany, killed by raiders but never buried); in general it's an excellent book.

It is let down by the fact that the numerous lovely photographs are presented out of order and without cross-referencing to the relevant pages, and also (I know I keep going on about this) by the use of endnotes, so that relevant and interesting information is buried hundreds of pages from the text to which it refers. I wouldn't mind if this was merely a question of providing precise citations, but the notes have a lot more narrative material. No publisher should do this and no author should tolerate it from their publisher. In these days of advanced technology, there is no excuse for not having proper footnotes on each page relating to the text on each page, as Gibbon was able to do in the eighteenth century. Accept no excuses and no alternatives.

An excellent quick reference tool for students of world history and related classes, as well as generalists just interested in history.