Becoming Charlemagne : Europe, Baghdad, and the Empires of A.D. 800

from nessreader

A massmarket history which is written in horribly overblown and overdramatised prose, to bulk out a shortage of data. The subject should be fascinating and I wanted to read this but found it unreadable. Though a drinking game might be made out of the plethora of adjectives. So far the merchants h...

from ztutz

This book describes in very cursory fashion the rise of Charlemagne. Although the author tried very hard to couch this story in an exciting, non-academic, way, his efforts failed for me. The story is set against the background of Catholic Rome, Byzantine Constantinople and Abbasid Baghdad, but th...

from nmele

This short history is more a summary of Charlemagne's life and an outline of the state of Europe, Byzantium and the Muslim world around the year 800 AD than it is an exploration of the process by which Karl, king of the Franks, became the legendary Charlemagne. It is, however, a great read, with ...