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December 2021 MBR The World History Shelf
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Midwest Book Review
Jan 2, 2022, 1:53:37 PM1/2/22
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The World History Shelf
Europe's Babylon
Michael Pye
Pegasus Books
http://www.pegasusbooks.com
9781643137773, $28.95 hc / $18.99 Kindle
https://www.amazon.com/Europes-Babylon-Rise-Antwerps-Golden/dp/1643137778
Synopsis: Before Amsterdam, there was a dazzling North Sea port at the hub of the known world: the city of Antwerp.
In the Age of Exploration, Antwerp was sensational like nineteenth-century Paris or twentieth-century New York. It was somewhere anything could happen or at least be believed: killer bankers, easy kisses, a market in secrets and every kind of heresy. For half the sixteenth century, it was the place for breaking rules - religious, sexual, intellectual.
And it was a place of change - a single man cornered all the money in the city and reinvented ideas of what money meant. Another gave the city a new shape purely out of his own ambition. Jews fleeing the Portuguese Inquisition needed Antwerp for their escape, thanks to the remarkable woman at the head of the grandest banking family in Europe.
Thomas More opened Utopia there, Erasmus puzzled over money and exchanges, William Tyndale sheltered there and smuggled out his Bible in English until he was killed. Pieter Bruegel painted the town as The Tower of Babel.
But when Antwerp rebelled with the Dutch against the Spanish and lost, all that glory was buried and its true history rewritten. The city that unsettled so many now became conformist. Mutinous troops burned the city records, trying to erase its true history.
In Europe's Babylon, Michael Pye sets out to rediscover the city that was lost and bring its wilder days to life using every kind of clue: novels, paintings, songs, schoolbooks, letters and the archives of Venice, London and the Medici. He builds a picture of a city haunted by fire, plague, and violence, but one that was learning how to be a power in its own right as it emerged from feudalism.
An astounding and original narrative that illuminates this glamorous and bloody era of history and reveals how this fascinating city played its role in making the world modern.
Critique: Europe's Babylon: The Rise and Fall of Antwerp's Golden Age is a fascinating history and scrutiny of 16th-century Antwerp, a port town in Belgium that grew into a world-spanning trade hub. Antwerp's downfall came when the city sided with the Dutch rebellion against the Spanish, and lost. Mutinous troops burned the city's records, and much of its history was lost. Europe's Babylon seeks to reconstruct the past from a wide variety of records - novels, paintings, songs, schoolbooks, letters, archives, and much more. Europe's Babylon offers a window through time into a post-feudal city that grew into astonishing power and influence, despite depredations of fire, plague, and violence. Europe's Babylon is an welcome contribution to public and college library World History collections, highly recommended. It should be noted for personal reading lists that Europe's Babylon is also available in a Kindle edition ($18.99).
Editorial Note: Michael Pye is the author of The Drowning Room, The Pieces from Berlin, and The Edge of the World, all three of which were New York Times Notable Books of the Year.
History of the Caucasus
Christoph Baumer
I. B. Tauris Publishers
www.ibtauris.com
c/o Bloomsbury Press
https://www.bloomsbury.com
9781788310079, $38.42, HC, 392pp
https://www.amazon.com/History-Caucasus-At-Crossroads-Empires/dp/1788310071
Synopsis: A landscape of high mountains and narrow valleys stretching from the Black to the Caspian Seas, the Caucasus region has been home to human populations for nearly 2 million years. "History of the Caucasus: At the Crossroads of Empires" is the first of a richly illustrated 2-volume series in which historian and explorer Christoph Baumer tells the story of the region's history through to the present day. It is a story of encounters between many different peoples, from Scythians, Turkic and Mongol peoples of the East to Greeks and Romans from the West, from Indo-European tribes from the West as well as the East, and to Arabs and Iranians from the South. It is a story of rival claims by Empires and nations and of how the region has become home to more than 50 languages that can be heard within its borders to this very day.
This first volume charts the period from the emergence of the earliest human populations in the region - the first known human populations outside Africa - to the Seljuk conquests of 1050CE. Along the way the book charts the development of Neolithic, Iron and Bronze Age cultures, the first recognizable Caucasian state and the arrival of a succession of the great transnational Empires, from the Greeks, the Romans and the Armenian to competing Christian and Muslim conquerors. "The History of the Caucasus: Volume 1" also includes more than 200 full color images and maps bringing the changing cultures of these lands vividly to life.
Critique: Impressively informative, profusely illustrated, exceptionally well organized and presented, "History of the Caucasus: At the Crossroads of Empires" by historian Christoph Baumer is an extraordinary work of regional history that will have enormous appeal for the non- specialist general reader and the academician alike -- making this an especially and unreservedly recommended addition to personal, community, college, and university library Asian history collections in general, and supplemental curriculum studies reading lists in particular.
Editorial Note: Christoph Baumer is a leading explorer and historian of Central Asia. He is President of the Society for the Exploration of EurAsia and is a member of the Explorers' Club, New York, and of the Royal Asiatic Society, the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Society for Asian Affairs, London.
Nero: The Man Behind The Myth
Thorsten Opper
The British Museum
c/o Distributed Art Publishers
www.artbook.com
9780714122908, $65.00, HC, 304pp
https://www.amazon.com/Nero-Behind-Myth-Thorsten-Opper/dp/0714122904
Synopsis: One of the best known and simultaneously most notorious figures from Roman history, Nero (r. AD 54 - 68) is usually characterised as a tyrannical and ineffectual emperor, a ruler who proverbially 'fiddled while Rome burnt'. However, as new research demonstrates, this reputation is crudely reductive and was carefully crafted in antiquity by hostile elite authors, who envisioned a different form of rule more mindful of the demands of their own social and political class.
"Nero: The Man Behind The Myth" by Thorsten Opper and published by The British Museum redresses the balance and provides a more nuanced interpretation of Nero's reign and Roman society of the time, reflecting on the traditional perceptions of his rule and revealing the substantial external and internal challenges with which the sixteen-year-old heir to the Roman empire had to contend.
Nero's rule fell in an extended period of transition and profound social and economic change. The empire had grown rapidly during previous centuries, and an astonishing era of peace and prosperity followed the introduction of one-man rule after decades of bloody civil war under Nero's great-great-grandfather Augustus. However, political institutions and elite mindsets were slow to adjust to the resulting rise of former outsiders, people from the provinces and freed slaves.
"Nero: The Man Behind The Myth" considers in detail the resulting tensions and the challenging role of Nero's family within them. Powerful individuals, among them many women, including Nero's mother Agrippina, and his tutor and advisor Seneca, come to life against the backdrop of these times, when different court factions thought to manipulate the young ruler. At the same time, intriguing evidence - doodles and graffiti - from Rome, Pompeii and other Vesuvian cities gives voice to often very different attitudes of common people, completely ignored by the ancient literary sources.
In addition to these internal challenges, Nero inherited a great conflict with the rival power of the Parthians and unrest in unsettled newly conquered territories, including Britain. The book examines his military and diplomatic response and the powerful visual language - often disregarded - that presented him as a successful young military leader throughout the empire. Administrative and tax reforms culminated in 'populist' policies that also saw him embrace enthusiastically the possibilities offered through public entertainments (the circus, arena and theater) to communicate directly with his subjects and project a more direct, charismatic form of rule. Yet his grand building projects and the beautification of his capital were offset by severe natural disasters and a devastating fire of Rome.
Popular with the common people to the very end, Nero could not reconcile the internal contradictions of the principate, the political system introduced by Augustus. Hostile segments of the elite were behind military rebellions in AD 68 that quickly drove Nero from power. His enforced suicide brought to an end the rule of Rome's first imperial dynasty, the Julio-Claudians. The subsequent vilification of his memory and the removal and desecration of his image are an enduring, but misleading, legacy that leave a fascinating reign to be explored anew.
Critique: Beautifully and profusely illustrated throughout, this new biographical history of Nero is inherently fascinating, impressively informative, and a meticulous work of detailed and exhaustive research. A work of impeccable scholarship that will appel to academia and non- specialist general readers alike, this coffee-table style edition (9.84 x 11.02 inches) of "Nero: The Man Behind The Myth" is an especially and unreservedly recommended addition to community, college, and university library Roman History collections in general, and Emperor Nero supplemental curriculum studies reading lists in particular. It should be noted for personal reading lists that "Nero: The Man Behind The Myth" is also readily available in a paperback edition (9780714122915, $40.00).
Editorial Note: Thorsten Opper is a curator of Greek and Roman Sculpture at the British Museum, specializing in ancient portraiture, the Greek world in the Roman period, and the collecting and restoration of ancient sculpture in the eighteenth century. Thorsten joined the British Museum in 2001 from the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. His previous publications include Hadrian: Empire and Conflict (London, British Museum Press, 2008).
EDITOR'S NOTE:
The Midwest Book Review is an organization of volunteers committed to promoting literacy, library usage, and small press publishing. We accept no funds from authors or publishers. Full permission is given to post any of these reviews on thematically appropriate websites, newsgroups, listserves, internet discussion groups, organizational newsletters, or to interested individuals. Please give the Midwest Book Review a credit line when doing so.
The Midwest Book Review publishes the monthly book review magazines "California Bookwatch", "Internet Bookwatch", "Children's Bookwatch", "MBR Bookwatch", "Reviewer's Bookwatch", and "Small Press Bookwatch". All are available for free on the Midwest Book Review website at www (dot) midwestbookreview (dot) com
Anyone wanting to submit books for review consideration can send them to:
James A. Cox, Editor-in-Chief
Midwest Book Review
278 Orchard Drive
Oregon, WI 53575-1129
To submit reviews of any fiction or non-fiction books, email them to Frugalmuse (at) aol (dot) com (Be sure to include the book title, author, publisher, publisher address, publisher website/phone number, 13-digit ISBN number, and list price).
James A. Cox, Editor-in-Chief
Midwest Book Review
Europe's Babylon
Michael Pye
Pegasus Books
http://www.pegasusbooks.com
9781643137773, $28.95 hc / $18.99 Kindle
https://www.amazon.com/Europes-Babylon-Rise-Antwerps-Golden/dp/1643137778
Synopsis: Before Amsterdam, there was a dazzling North Sea port at the hub of the known world: the city of Antwerp.
In the Age of Exploration, Antwerp was sensational like nineteenth-century Paris or twentieth-century New York. It was somewhere anything could happen or at least be believed: killer bankers, easy kisses, a market in secrets and every kind of heresy. For half the sixteenth century, it was the place for breaking rules - religious, sexual, intellectual.
And it was a place of change - a single man cornered all the money in the city and reinvented ideas of what money meant. Another gave the city a new shape purely out of his own ambition. Jews fleeing the Portuguese Inquisition needed Antwerp for their escape, thanks to the remarkable woman at the head of the grandest banking family in Europe.
Thomas More opened Utopia there, Erasmus puzzled over money and exchanges, William Tyndale sheltered there and smuggled out his Bible in English until he was killed. Pieter Bruegel painted the town as The Tower of Babel.
But when Antwerp rebelled with the Dutch against the Spanish and lost, all that glory was buried and its true history rewritten. The city that unsettled so many now became conformist. Mutinous troops burned the city records, trying to erase its true history.
In Europe's Babylon, Michael Pye sets out to rediscover the city that was lost and bring its wilder days to life using every kind of clue: novels, paintings, songs, schoolbooks, letters and the archives of Venice, London and the Medici. He builds a picture of a city haunted by fire, plague, and violence, but one that was learning how to be a power in its own right as it emerged from feudalism.
An astounding and original narrative that illuminates this glamorous and bloody era of history and reveals how this fascinating city played its role in making the world modern.
Critique: Europe's Babylon: The Rise and Fall of Antwerp's Golden Age is a fascinating history and scrutiny of 16th-century Antwerp, a port town in Belgium that grew into a world-spanning trade hub. Antwerp's downfall came when the city sided with the Dutch rebellion against the Spanish, and lost. Mutinous troops burned the city's records, and much of its history was lost. Europe's Babylon seeks to reconstruct the past from a wide variety of records - novels, paintings, songs, schoolbooks, letters, archives, and much more. Europe's Babylon offers a window through time into a post-feudal city that grew into astonishing power and influence, despite depredations of fire, plague, and violence. Europe's Babylon is an welcome contribution to public and college library World History collections, highly recommended. It should be noted for personal reading lists that Europe's Babylon is also available in a Kindle edition ($18.99).
Editorial Note: Michael Pye is the author of The Drowning Room, The Pieces from Berlin, and The Edge of the World, all three of which were New York Times Notable Books of the Year.
History of the Caucasus
Christoph Baumer
I. B. Tauris Publishers
www.ibtauris.com
c/o Bloomsbury Press
https://www.bloomsbury.com
9781788310079, $38.42, HC, 392pp
https://www.amazon.com/History-Caucasus-At-Crossroads-Empires/dp/1788310071
Synopsis: A landscape of high mountains and narrow valleys stretching from the Black to the Caspian Seas, the Caucasus region has been home to human populations for nearly 2 million years. "History of the Caucasus: At the Crossroads of Empires" is the first of a richly illustrated 2-volume series in which historian and explorer Christoph Baumer tells the story of the region's history through to the present day. It is a story of encounters between many different peoples, from Scythians, Turkic and Mongol peoples of the East to Greeks and Romans from the West, from Indo-European tribes from the West as well as the East, and to Arabs and Iranians from the South. It is a story of rival claims by Empires and nations and of how the region has become home to more than 50 languages that can be heard within its borders to this very day.
This first volume charts the period from the emergence of the earliest human populations in the region - the first known human populations outside Africa - to the Seljuk conquests of 1050CE. Along the way the book charts the development of Neolithic, Iron and Bronze Age cultures, the first recognizable Caucasian state and the arrival of a succession of the great transnational Empires, from the Greeks, the Romans and the Armenian to competing Christian and Muslim conquerors. "The History of the Caucasus: Volume 1" also includes more than 200 full color images and maps bringing the changing cultures of these lands vividly to life.
Critique: Impressively informative, profusely illustrated, exceptionally well organized and presented, "History of the Caucasus: At the Crossroads of Empires" by historian Christoph Baumer is an extraordinary work of regional history that will have enormous appeal for the non- specialist general reader and the academician alike -- making this an especially and unreservedly recommended addition to personal, community, college, and university library Asian history collections in general, and supplemental curriculum studies reading lists in particular.
Editorial Note: Christoph Baumer is a leading explorer and historian of Central Asia. He is President of the Society for the Exploration of EurAsia and is a member of the Explorers' Club, New York, and of the Royal Asiatic Society, the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Society for Asian Affairs, London.
Nero: The Man Behind The Myth
Thorsten Opper
The British Museum
c/o Distributed Art Publishers
www.artbook.com
9780714122908, $65.00, HC, 304pp
https://www.amazon.com/Nero-Behind-Myth-Thorsten-Opper/dp/0714122904
Synopsis: One of the best known and simultaneously most notorious figures from Roman history, Nero (r. AD 54 - 68) is usually characterised as a tyrannical and ineffectual emperor, a ruler who proverbially 'fiddled while Rome burnt'. However, as new research demonstrates, this reputation is crudely reductive and was carefully crafted in antiquity by hostile elite authors, who envisioned a different form of rule more mindful of the demands of their own social and political class.
"Nero: The Man Behind The Myth" by Thorsten Opper and published by The British Museum redresses the balance and provides a more nuanced interpretation of Nero's reign and Roman society of the time, reflecting on the traditional perceptions of his rule and revealing the substantial external and internal challenges with which the sixteen-year-old heir to the Roman empire had to contend.
Nero's rule fell in an extended period of transition and profound social and economic change. The empire had grown rapidly during previous centuries, and an astonishing era of peace and prosperity followed the introduction of one-man rule after decades of bloody civil war under Nero's great-great-grandfather Augustus. However, political institutions and elite mindsets were slow to adjust to the resulting rise of former outsiders, people from the provinces and freed slaves.
"Nero: The Man Behind The Myth" considers in detail the resulting tensions and the challenging role of Nero's family within them. Powerful individuals, among them many women, including Nero's mother Agrippina, and his tutor and advisor Seneca, come to life against the backdrop of these times, when different court factions thought to manipulate the young ruler. At the same time, intriguing evidence - doodles and graffiti - from Rome, Pompeii and other Vesuvian cities gives voice to often very different attitudes of common people, completely ignored by the ancient literary sources.
In addition to these internal challenges, Nero inherited a great conflict with the rival power of the Parthians and unrest in unsettled newly conquered territories, including Britain. The book examines his military and diplomatic response and the powerful visual language - often disregarded - that presented him as a successful young military leader throughout the empire. Administrative and tax reforms culminated in 'populist' policies that also saw him embrace enthusiastically the possibilities offered through public entertainments (the circus, arena and theater) to communicate directly with his subjects and project a more direct, charismatic form of rule. Yet his grand building projects and the beautification of his capital were offset by severe natural disasters and a devastating fire of Rome.
Popular with the common people to the very end, Nero could not reconcile the internal contradictions of the principate, the political system introduced by Augustus. Hostile segments of the elite were behind military rebellions in AD 68 that quickly drove Nero from power. His enforced suicide brought to an end the rule of Rome's first imperial dynasty, the Julio-Claudians. The subsequent vilification of his memory and the removal and desecration of his image are an enduring, but misleading, legacy that leave a fascinating reign to be explored anew.
Critique: Beautifully and profusely illustrated throughout, this new biographical history of Nero is inherently fascinating, impressively informative, and a meticulous work of detailed and exhaustive research. A work of impeccable scholarship that will appel to academia and non- specialist general readers alike, this coffee-table style edition (9.84 x 11.02 inches) of "Nero: The Man Behind The Myth" is an especially and unreservedly recommended addition to community, college, and university library Roman History collections in general, and Emperor Nero supplemental curriculum studies reading lists in particular. It should be noted for personal reading lists that "Nero: The Man Behind The Myth" is also readily available in a paperback edition (9780714122915, $40.00).
Editorial Note: Thorsten Opper is a curator of Greek and Roman Sculpture at the British Museum, specializing in ancient portraiture, the Greek world in the Roman period, and the collecting and restoration of ancient sculpture in the eighteenth century. Thorsten joined the British Museum in 2001 from the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. His previous publications include Hadrian: Empire and Conflict (London, British Museum Press, 2008).
EDITOR'S NOTE:
The Midwest Book Review is an organization of volunteers committed to promoting literacy, library usage, and small press publishing. We accept no funds from authors or publishers. Full permission is given to post any of these reviews on thematically appropriate websites, newsgroups, listserves, internet discussion groups, organizational newsletters, or to interested individuals. Please give the Midwest Book Review a credit line when doing so.
The Midwest Book Review publishes the monthly book review magazines "California Bookwatch", "Internet Bookwatch", "Children's Bookwatch", "MBR Bookwatch", "Reviewer's Bookwatch", and "Small Press Bookwatch". All are available for free on the Midwest Book Review website at www (dot) midwestbookreview (dot) com
Anyone wanting to submit books for review consideration can send them to:
James A. Cox, Editor-in-Chief
Midwest Book Review
278 Orchard Drive
Oregon, WI 53575-1129
To submit reviews of any fiction or non-fiction books, email them to Frugalmuse (at) aol (dot) com (Be sure to include the book title, author, publisher, publisher address, publisher website/phone number, 13-digit ISBN number, and list price).
James A. Cox, Editor-in-Chief
Midwest Book Review
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