Afbeelding auteur

Hunt Janin

Auteur van Culture Shock! Netherlands

16 Werken 196 Leden 16 Besprekingen

Over de Auteur

Hunt Janin is an American writer living in southwestern France. He has written numerous nonfiction and scholarly books on a range of subjects, including medieval history and cross-cultural studies.

Bevat de naam: Hunt Janin

Werken van Hunt Janin

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Algemene kennis

Geboortedatum
1940-08-16
Geslacht
male
Nationaliteit
USA

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Besprekingen

This was a strange one.

First things first - in my opinion book is solid 3.5 stars but due to the no option when it comes to half stars I rounded it to four. It is not four but definitely ain't three for me. Will explain why.

As I said it is a strange book.

I have read several books on ancient Greek, Roman, Middle Ages, in general Asian, European [from everywhere, if I start wont stop] warfare written by authors that kept the pace and tone of their books on par with standard academic literature. Lots of archaeological findings, discussions on various surviving written works and sources etc., not to mention hard-core discussions on the armies, commanders, organization, weapons, training, society, finance and so on, so on. So, very thorough, very academic and, oh man, detailed to the t. After going through these books there are wonderful bibliographies to read further and expand the knowledge.

I am in love with this, believe me. Investigating further works, chasing down books ..... ah, the rush.

But here is the point - it takes time and ... did I say time :) which is something I understand but for the most people reading about wages for Greek mercenaries (cannot cite the work, need to find it but I think title is Greek mercenaries) for three chapters is something that would drive the entire endeavor to the ground. Of course I am saying this will happen in case of general reader not so interested in historical elements but interested in the topic, learning something new without spending semester chasing down gazillion books about metal structure of spears and weapons of period before finally getting to few words about the actual topic (in this case mercenaries).

What authors achieve here is to make a book friendly to somebody who just wants to inform oneself on the topic - rise of professional armies, mercenaries, in the Middle Ages and Renaissance Europe up to a point where national armies began to take precedence. In a very informal way (this surprised me a lot to be honest, but it was a good experience) reader is presented information on a variety of people, nations and very eccentric warlords (mercenary captains) that have marked some of the deadliest periods in Europe's history and that have caused such loss of life it took Europe long time to recover.

Authors truly take time to explain all the terms (even when quoting from other sources) and present lots of facts. Now when you read this book (when compared to the above mentioned more academically oriented books) lack of footnotes is glaringly obvious but only until you reach to the end of the book and find all the references to the notes. Second thing is, quoted sources come from all over the place - contemporaries, modern scholars (say from 18th century to modern days), but also from the Internet. Now, quoting Internet sources is not something you come across too often, and that is for the reason (reliability in today's world is ..... lets say questionable for majority of posted materiel), but as a quick guide to other works (considering the authors intent with the book) it works just fine. Also it is not just Internet references, lots of books referenced in the bibliography are excellent follow up reads for those who get hooked on topic. And they do quote quite a few specialist for the topic and time period.

So as a true academic work, this book is three stars. But for bringing to the light some of the weirdest and eccentric people that marked the conflict in Europe, various nations and groups that took professional soldiering as their trademark but got forgotten in the meantime, and by doing that in very popular way, without too much specialist terminology (and taking time to explain terms that do come up) this book deserves solid half star which translates to 4 stars.

It is very hard these days to find books that try to bring any of the subjects in a layman terms. Once upon the time books like this were more accessible and present. Most books I come across today just simply do not act as initiation tools but try to be handy manual to be used without further research, they try to be very poor readers digests that usually degrade to picture book formats and very little information on how to learn more.

I think that authors have succeeded in creating an entry level book that will definitely interest readers and enable them to use it as a reference guide to start further studies and exploration of this most interesting (and if you look at war as a disaster, then also unfortunate but nevertheless integral part of every society) subject that, once it has risen its head, it never disappeared from the battlefields of past, today or even tomorrow.

Recommended.
… (meer)
 
Gemarkeerd
Zare | 7 andere besprekingen | Jan 23, 2024 |
Deze bespreking is geschreven voor LibraryThing Vroege Recensenten.
It isn’t often that I bother to leave a negative review. For the most part, I close the book and move on. However, this is an interesting case. Mercenaries in Medieval and Renaissance Europe by Hunt Janin and Ursula Carlson is a book I have had for six years. I received a review copy through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers program, but I get enough review requests that I cannot do a formal review of everything; so it sat unread.

Recently, I’ve been enjoying Jeffro Johnson’s Advanced Dungeons and Dragons first edition campaign reports on his blog, which led to me taking a look through the the brief rulebook, Chainmail: Rules for Medieval Miniatures by Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren. Jeffro is best known for exploring Appendix N and its influence on D&D, but recently he has also been looking at how players in the 1970s interpreted the concept of a role playing game, and how that differs from how the game is played now.

Chainmail is a set of rules for miniature wargaming in a medieval setting, and as such it has a brief but dense summary of how medieval warfare was conducted embedded within it as the behavior of the various units you can field is explained. In particular, any unit in the game can be fielded as a mercenary unit, but that unit can randomly stop obeying the player’s orders, or even flee the battle entirely. This is counter-balanced by the units being cheaper to field, allowing you more total troops.

I decided I should pick up Mercenaries in Medieval and Renaissance Europe as a more in-depth coverage of that topic. At first, I was reasonably pleased. It is a relatively short book, written in a pretty accessible style for the non-expert, taking care to explain terms of art that a general audience might be unfamiliar with.

However, as I got into the book, it started to seem quite different than my expectations. The back cover blurb claimed the book draws heavily on contemporary accounts, but in the introductory chapters, covering medieval and renaissance warfare in general, I found that most everything cited was just a quote or a paraphrase from a secondary source.

I hoped for a different pattern to emerge in the following chapters, but I only found more of the same. The section on medieval weapons and armor at least cited Anna Comnena’s account of the crossbow from the Alexiad, but that account contains a ridiculous exaggeration of the power of a twelfth-century crossbow.

"The crossbow is a weapon of the barbarians, absolutely unknown to the Greeks…this instrument of war, which fires weapons an enormous distance, as to be stretched by lying almost on one’s back; each foot is pressed forcibly against the half-circles of the bow and two hands tug at the bow, pulling it back with all one’s strength toward the body….In the firing, the string exerts tremendous violence and force, so that the missiles wherever they strike do not rebound; in fact, they transfix a shield, cut through a heavy iron breastplate, and resume their flight on the far side."

The authors did at least mention that medieval commentators had a tendency to overstate the numbers of men in a battle, casualties, and the scope of a victory. For example, in the preface, the authors compared the number of men of listed in an account of a papal campaign in Corsica in 1445 as 16,000, while the financial records indicate there could have been more than 1,000. Yet, when it comes to the Alexiad, they fail to take the same care. The Knight and the Blast Furnace by Alan Williams is a standard work here, using careful measurement and experimentation to determine what weapons could or could not penetrate armor. It is admittedly out of print, but summaries of its important points are easy to find if you care to look.

One of the main criticisms I see of this work in other reviews is that the authors frequently cited webpages. On a first glance through the notes, it didn’t seem overly prevalent, but a closer look reveals a number of sources in the notes such as “Medieval Warfare”, which means www.medievalwarfare.info when you consult the bibliography. In principle, I don’t care if an author cites a webpage. Authors of other popular works of history like Ed West have done so in Path of the Martyrs. I did so myself in the crossbow discussion above. I do however think the authors might have dug a little harder in many instances.

Also contrary to some other reviews, the authors haven’t simply passed on falsehoods. The weapons and armor section seems poor to me, but I also note is is the least footnoted, and the errors contained therein are at least popular ones. Janin and Carlson correctly note that Hruodland, captain of the Breton Marches was likely killed by angry Basques, even if that complicates the narrative of the Song of Roland.

Overall, I don’t think I could recommend this book, despite the overlap of its subject matter with my interests. Much of the material is repetitive, and it is organized strangely, skipping back and forth across centuries within a few paragraphs. I think a much shorter, more focused volume might have turned out better, but I also don’t know exactly what the publisher asked of these authors.

I think I might get more out of the books in the bibliography complied here. Perhaps that is the true value I have received.
… (meer)
 
Gemarkeerd
bespen | 7 andere besprekingen | Jan 7, 2021 |
Deze bespreking is geschreven voor LibraryThing Vroege Recensenten.
This book would be useful for those who seek a better understanding of life in Medieval and Renaissance Europe. While the book covers a range of nearly a thousand years, the information flows in a roughly chronological order. The authors present information that not only could benefit someone interested in military history, but anyone interested in the everyday lives of both peasant and nobility. Military units were employed in wars and crusades, but often there were long periods of idleness. If not in the active pay of a noble, these men often turned into brigands, terrorizing the countryside. So not only do we learn of military life, both in camps and in battle, but also how local life could be disrupted when these men turned outlaw.
The book does not flow well, and is a challenge to read. Often notes and asides interrupt the pace, and tax the concentration of the reader. However, I think overall there is enough interesting information to make this book worth the effort.
… (meer)
 
Gemarkeerd
MasonTaylor | 7 andere besprekingen | Mar 19, 2017 |
Deze bespreking is geschreven voor LibraryThing Vroege Recensenten.
This book is a great introduction to a problem that will affect millions of people in the coming century. It is not an overly technical explanation, so that makes it an inviting read for all people interested in the topic. The book design is somewhat cheap and it could definitely use more visual stimulation (especially since it's an introductory book), but for me that didn't take away too much from my experience. I would recommend this.
 
Gemarkeerd
bkd | 6 andere besprekingen | Sep 7, 2014 |

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Statistieken

Werken
16
Leden
196
Populariteit
#111,885
Waardering
3.2
Besprekingen
16
ISBNs
53

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