A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance: Portrait of an Age (Hardcover) by William Manchester

from A_musing

Rarely has so bad a book been written by a professional historian. We are not talking about run of the mill bad. We are talking about outright horrendous and unredeemable. Someone refers to it in another review as "full of half-truths" and I ask, "Where?" Little in here rises to the level of a ha...

from mrtall

Ah, Medieval Man! Let's see what he's up to (at least according to William Manchester's account of him in A World Lit Only by Fire). He rises in the morning, along with a posse of his inbred relations, from his lice-ridden communal bed. He's too poor and stupid to have a blanket, of course. He wi...

from KLmesoftly

If I had to describe this book in one word alone, I'd have to choose "narrow-minded." Manchester is narrow-minded in the sense that he refuses to think of those living during the Middle Ages as having any sort of variety of temperament or belief--he speaks constantly in terms of "the Medieval man...

from KLmesoftly

If I had to describe this book in one word alone, I'd have to choose "narrow-minded." Manchester is narrow-minded in the sense that he refuses to think of those living during the Middle Ages as having any sort of variety of temperament or belief--he speaks constantly in terms of "the Medieval man...

from folo01

Outdated ideas and sheer foolishness, so well written that you would just like to horsewhip him. The SCA of historical non-fiction!