Ć·±ŠÓéÀÖ

Jose, here is your new thread in 2015. Happy reading in the new year.

Our Required Format:

JANUARY

1. by Winston S. Churchill
Finish date: January 2015
Genre: (whatever genre the book happens to be)
Rating: A
Review: You can add text from a review you have written but no links to any review elsewhere even goodreads. And that is about it. Just make sure to number consecutively and just add the months.

Thank you, Bentley! I hereby formally assume my role on this challenge.

JANUARY
1. by Michio Kaku
Finish date: 3rd January 2015
Genre: Science
Rating: B
Review: I was hoping for a more "fantastic future" kind of book, but fortunately that wasn't the case. This is a nice introduction (mainly to the non-scientist or those who don't know much about neurosciences) to the brain, its abilities and consciousness (he even debates a possible alien one and AI). Michio Kaku has great communication skills and a lot of knowledge on his area (I even learned what negative energy really is), but sometimes it becomes obvious in some details he isn't a biologist for those who have already a bit more of knowledge on the area like in chapter 7, when he tries to explain how can less than 23000 genes code a complex brain (and consequently how the human genome codes the entire human body). I love the way how he writes about ethical questions, notwithstanding his lack of originality (although he makes his own comments very clear) and I slightly disagree with him regarding animal intelligence. Finally, I don't recommend his views on the fall of the Roman Empire (he used it to show how we could resist against aliens, but the most likely scenario as he admits is the simple destruction of Mankind by them if they are evil) because they are partially outdated or simply wrong.

One more thing needed - the name of the month above the book citation.

All good now (smile) - good start

2. by Nicholas Shrady (no photo)
Finish date: 4th January 2015
Genre: History
Rating: C
Review: When I started reading this book, I was enjoying it throughly, but then several flaws appeared that put me off. First of all (but it doesn't matter much) when it described the tsunami that happened after the Great Lisbon Earhquake which destroyed much of the parts of Lisbon's center which hadn't been so afected by the first natural disaster or by the uncontrolled fires resulting from it.

All might have been well if that was the only issue and I could have given the maximum grade, but then I read the 2 chapters where he recapitulates Lisbon and Portugal's History in a very caricatural way, namely its ancient and medieval History (as the early modern one, despite some flaws or oversimplifications, was much better written). Just to give you an idea of what I'm talking about, he depicts the medieval Christians as barbarians and the Reconquista as a great throwback in economical and tolerance terms for the peninsula. Those ideas are completely false as the economy continued to grow until the late 13th and early 14th centuries, when the 14th century crisis started. He also thinks medieval Christians were intolerant towards Muslims and Jews, but despite pogroms in the worst points of the 14th century crisis there was a culture of "convivencia" in former Hispania and Portugal was much more tolerant than Castile (but there was tolerance even there) until the reign of Manuel I (1495-1521), with Jewish physicians and bankers in the Portuguese court since the times of Afonso Henriques.

After that blunder he described the philosophical and scientific (this last one in a very brief way) consequences of the earthquake and Pombal's rule and reforms as the minister of king Joseph I (1750-1777) until he was sacked by Maria I (1777-1816) when she suceeded the throne and exiled in 1781 to his residence at Pombal. Those chapters were good overall (despite the odd historical error), but weren't outstanding, especially to overcome the blunder he did before, and I hoped a bit more about the development of seismology as this science had its modern origins with Pombal's seismological questionnaire and John Michell's (also was the first who proposed the existence of black holes) wave theory resulting from the tragic earthquake of 1st November 1755.

This book may be good for those who don't know Portuguese and want to know more about the historical events described and how people reacted to the natural disasters in the 18th century (many still believed in religious justifications, nothwitstanding the Illuminists' varied proto-scientific or in Michell's case scientific beliefs on the subject), but there are better works on the subject. It's just a pity those other books are only written in Portuguese if I'm not mistaken.

3. by Stephen Lay (no photo)
Finish date: 17th January 2015
Genre: History
Rating: A-
Review: This is a good book on the subject of Portugal's formation in the context of the of the "Reconquista". It even brought one or two new insights for me about important details which are rarely discussed in Portugal (for instance, the reason why count Henry of Portucale gained his county at the expense of his cousin Raymond, which is a bit romanticized by most people in my country). I just had a small issue with some places mainly on the first map and one or two small incoherences in dates or names of places, but I think part of the reason might lay on the translation (I read the Portuguese edition of the book and, for instance, Boulogne appeared on the book with its English and Portuguese names in different contexts, indicating the translation might have been a bit sloppy) and I don't know the extent to which small errors like putting a wrong date (and then a page or a few ones later the right one appears). This book is recommended for those who want to know more about the Hispanic and, in particular, Portuguese, Medieval History.

4. by Manuel Sobrinho SimÔes
Finish date: 21st January 2015
Genre: Science
Rating: B
Review: Manuel Sobrinho SimÔes is a Portuguese doctor (an Anatomic Pathology specialist) and Professor who is best known for his works in thyroid cancer and here in Portugal for his research institute (IPATIMUP). The book here presented is a collection of articles made by him as well as several interviews. It's a great read because he always manages to bring great insights about cancer and enlightens a lot on the subject from his perspective, explaining his work and the oncological diseases in a clear and simple but scientificly correct way. He also reflects on some of his interviews about Portugal and the city of Porto (where he lives). I just have to point out that if the book had been written in an organized way instead of simply making the collection, it might have been brilliant.

Great progress Jose

5. by SĂ©rgio LuĂ­s de Carvalho
Finish date: 31st January 2015
Genre: History
Rating: C+/B-
Review: This is an introduction to medieval social assistance and medicine in Portugal. It's a good book for those uninitiated on the subjects and even has primary documents copied there (although most words are in their modern Portuguese form), which is always a good thing. Despite these good things, it has two great issues: it doesn't focus enough on Medieval medicine (I was expecting to read a bit more on the doctors' proceedings as well as about the Jewish and Muslim doctors and their practices, with the former being only referred quickly when the author refers they had their own hospitals and almost in the end when he mentions Jewish doctors in the Early Modern Age) and the fact he focuses too much on the late 15th and the 16th centuries when this period isn't part of the Middle Ages. The author claims he needed to approach that as the late 15th and the early 16th centuries saw great reforms that needed to be approached so that the work might have some sense, but I disagree with him as he could have stopped in 1481 (the beginnings of John II's reign, which marks for many the end of the Middle Ages in Portugal due to his centralization reforms on many subjects from assistance to the Kingdom's administration and his support of the Portuguese discoveries and almost absolutist views of the monarchy) and if he really wanted to focus on that as well he should have renamed the title, which misleads a bit (not totally because he ends up talking about the Middle Ages in much of the book). In my opinion, the author just did that because he was making a book for the Portuguese Discoveries' Commemorations and, if he didn't focus on Medicine and assistance in the late 15th and 16th centuries he wouldn't have his book paid and edited by the Portuguese state (more specifically by the Ministry of Education), which comissioned it.

I feel a bit split regarding this. The book, as the author clearly says in his introduction, it's just an introductory work, but the flaws above left me a bit bitter. By precaution, I gave this grade to the book, but somehow I'm still unsatisfied. Sometimes I question if I'm being too harsh while others I think about giving a much worse grade. Perhaps it's better to don't think much more about it and just move to the next books.

That is true Jose - just move on to the next book and take from this one what you were able to learn as a take away.

FEBRUARY

6. by Peter H. Wilson (no photo)
Finish date: 12th February 2015
Genre: History
Rating: A
Review: This work is a very good read on the Thirty Years' War. It details all of the conflict very well and contextualizes it in early Modern Europe.

The author has a great knowledge of his matters and gives examples when he claims something, making his argumentation very strong. He just has some small issues with early modern history outside of Central Europe (like describing the Ottoman court as very similar to the medieval Roman one, despite all the obvious influences, or confusing between principality, earldom and Kingdom regarding Catalonia), but from what I realize this is mostly due to his highly specialized studies on early modern Central Europe and his narrowing of historical perspective (although he covers in an aproppriate way many of the other related conflicts on his work), but that's compensated by his almost encyclopedic knowledge about the inner workings of the Holy Roman Empire (it's needed a huge study to master such a complex topic). He also arguments against seeing the Thirty Years' War as the last conflict driven by religion and focuses instead on dynastic, geopolitical, ambition (both by the rulers who participated and the Bohemian rebels) and constitucional issues inside the Empire, while not completely denying the influence of the fundamentalists mainly in the Palatinate or in Ferdinand II (which were factors which delayed the war's end) and sees the conflict not as the founder of the modern state, but as a catalyst of that institution.


This author's style of writing, while giving much information and suiting me very well, isn't the best one for most people. Wilson has a dense academic text full of statistical examples, which is the cause of many critiques here, but I discount that in my evaluation because that's what is expected of a major account. Popular History is fine and I might give it the maximum grade if it's very well done, but people can't punish this work because they are used to reading easier books and stumbled on reading a more scholarly work. As this work (despite the flaws above) is an excellent work, I give it the maximum grade (especially considering it has almost 1000 pages, which forces any evaluation to be careful with the huge scope presented here).

Jose on message 12 and also on message 3 - one blank line needs to be added between the bolded month and the top of the citation.

It is best not to post your book unless you are posting your review at the same time.

7. by Ray Mackintosh (no photo)
Finish date: 15th February 2015
Genre: Science
Rating: A-/B+
Review: A nice and non-exhaustive overview of nuclear physics. It's illustrated with lots of pictures and graphics which helps the reader understanding this complex (and above all counter-intuitive) subject, namely for those like me who think a bit better in Physics and Maths with them (they gave me a bit of help in understanding the valley of energy). The only thing I'm not very "convinced" (here in the sense I still didn't understand, especially as the authors didn't detail about it) is how certain quantum phenomena like the action of the mesons can happen by a temporary lending of energy apparently defying the law of energy conservation (even if for a very short time) or how does the tunneling effect work. I guess I'll have to ask somewhere about this.

Problem fixed, Sir (smile and bow).

Thank you.

8. by Ian Hughes (no photo)
Finish date: 23rd February 2015
Genre: History
Rating: D+
Review: To start, I must say I was a bit hopeful this book might be good by the reviews available here despite being a work of popular History, but I was a bit defrauded while reading it.

The introduction and the first chapters (on the Roman world) are a bit awful, with many real basic mistakes being done there. The contrasting descriptions of the governments of Ravenna and Constantinople and the people from the western and eastern provinces regarding the way how they viewed themselves are completely false as well as the claims that the Romance languages were already around (that's clearly ridiculous and Ian Hughes should learn something about Romance philology), the Equites Sagitarii (called by their Greek equivalent in this book) were the results of Hunnic influence (when they had been around for much longer than that), the equestrians can hardly be called “middle classesâ€� and the medieval Roman world wasn't stagnated. Basically, a person will learn very few actual facts if it won't get confused by them.

The actual description of Belisarius' campaigns are much better, but aren't anything special at all (namely the descriptions of his private life) and the maps lack the movements by the Romans and its enemies through the theatres of operations (which would be certainly a nice addition to it), besides claiming the Suebi were subjects of the Franks (this seems a basic research error). He also sometimes uses Norwich as a source (when he isn't a trustworthy one and even that popular historian wrote his claims didn't have academic pretensions) and his bibliography and notes are non-existent (an horrible flaw especially if someone wants to check his sources), notwithstanding the fact he cites Procopius and Agathias often.

To end this review, this is the kind of popular History I don’t like: a book with lots of oversimplifications and mistakes which mislead the public unaware of the actual historical events. I also wonder how Goldsworthy passed many of these mistakes by what I already read from him. Perhaps he advised the author in the right direction, but was simply ignored, but even I’m a bit disappointed with his support of Ian Hughesâ€� work.

MARCH

9. by Canal Historia (no photo)
Finish date: 10th March 2015
Genre: History
Rating: C
Review: An average account of the greatest battles (or to describe many of them better, military campaigns) in History by the Iberian History Channel. It has a few odd mistakes, but some of its selections (like the battle of Otumba) are interesting. What I found a bit worse was the overemphasis on the 19th and 20th centuries while, for example, the medieval period had just 3 campaigns/battles (First Crusade, Navas de Tolosa and Azincourt) and there were other battles even more important than the battle of the Ebro (1938) or the Falkland War, like Adrianople (378), Yarmouk (636) or the First Battle of Breitenfield (1631).

Good progress Jose - terrific - sometimes an author believes that for his purposes that some of the battles are more important "for their purposes" than the others.

Yes, Bentley, I agree with you. As this was made by the Spanish section of the Iberian History Channel, there was a bias towards Spain.

Some of the battles were interesting like Otumba (1520) or Navas de Tolosa (1212), but even in the former perhaps I'd say that, for the same period they wanted to depict, the battle of Diu (1509) is a bit more important or that perhaps the siege of Malta (1565) and the siege of Orléans (1429) were more important respectively than Lepanto or Agincourt on the long run, but some of these battles are known for their strategies or due to their myths. By the way, I might be a bit biased towards Portugal by giving the example of the battle of Diu (lol).

The same thing occurred though when we were reading a book about the Incas. The majority of the histories were written by the Spaniards. What is refreshing is to also read the other side of things. Somewhere in the middle is usually the truth of the situation.

10. (no image) As Mensagens da Mensagem by Nuno HipĂłlito (no photo)
Finish date: 16th March 2015
Genre: Literature
Rating: B
Review: A nice scholarly study of "Message" by Fernando Pessoa. It really helped me to understand the hermetism and occultism of some of the poems (especially those at the end, which are more symbolic than those at the beginning).

11. by Umberto Eco
Finish date: 21st March 2015
Genre: Historical fiction
Rating: A+
Review: Umberto Eco did really an excellent job with The Name of the Rose! This should be an introductory book for everyone regarding late medieval philosophy and religion (the story is set in 1327), as many issues of the day are covered with some detail, including many medieval heresies, the fight for supreme temporal power between the Holy Roman Emperor Louis IV and the Pope John XXII and the luxuries and sins by the clergy (namely its secular branch, although the corruption in the regular clergy is also approached).

The abbey itself and most characters are fictional, but the whole environment is real and the author has really much care regarding historical accuracy, which is rare these days. Even his adjustments of reality and inventions, such as many apocryphal sentences in Latin (although I must say many other phrases came from the Bible, Saint Augustine or medieval literature), are very well done, plausible and have the intention of showing how much we don’t know about the Middle Ages and how hard it is to establish historical truth.

Besides the historical wonder of this book, I must say this isn’t only historical fiction, but also a cautionary tale, crime fiction (obviously!) and a philosophical reflection on art, tolerance, truth, society and literature, for instance.

The abbey’s library is a powerful symbol of knowledge, but it’s guarded by several monks (namely Jorge of Burgos), who defend prohibited wisdom from reaching everyone by forbidding access to the Edifice's library and in the case of the latter poisoning the last copy of the second book of Poetics, by Aristotle. They do it all in name of truth (even if with different intentions), but, as William of Baskerville shows several times throughout this work, that concept is hard if not impossible to achieve and logic ends up being an useful stair just to throw it away after our goals had been achieved (we see postmodernist influences here), while the monastery ends up burning in a simulacrum of the Apocalypse due to the monksâ€� extreme piety and narrow-minded view of the world around them. That, coupled with William’s reflection on the several heresies of the time or the recent past, the medieval Inquisition’s modus operandi and the way how several monks ended up being murdered for several reasons all connected to the lost book mentioned above just in the name of the Christian faith makes the reader think if truth can be reached and whether someone should be killed or oppressed in its name. That’s why The Name of the Rose is an apology of tolerance and it alarms the reader to the reality that, more than simple knowledge, open minds are needed in order to find and use it towards the greater good of Mankind, as otherwise our world may fall the same way the Abbey did on the seventh day of the story.

I also loved the descriptions of the church or the Mozarabic Apocalypses, for example, and his reflection on the effects of inequality in the medieval society (I think he uses them with metaphorical ends as well, but this might be unintended by Eco). This book is really recommended for anyone who likes historical fiction as one of the masterpieces of the genre.

Very good Jose

Added it to my list. Thanks, José!

You're welcome, Skeetor!

Perhaps I understated a bit the crime fiction part, but I didn't want to spoil more of the book's content and desired to bring its analysis to a superior level, i.e., instead of focusing on the small events and the story I gave attention to the author's messages he sends throughout the book and historical accuracy.

Thank you, Bentley. By the way, I didn't quote Aristotle's book because it's lost (the "Poetics" book you'll see if you search here on Ć·±ŠÓéÀÖ is the first and not the second one). As I can't quote non-existent books, I decided to don't do it. :)

12. by Umberto Eco
Finish date: 25th March 2015
Genre: Semiotics; Art History
Rating: B+
Review: History of Beauty is a nice exposition of the History of the concept of beauty. The scholarship by Eco is very good and the book has a lot of illustrations and primary sources to back his claims (although for the 20th century there is a lack of texts).

I must just warn that the stirrups didn't reach Europe in the High Middle Ages, but instead was already around in the late 6th and early 7th centuries (depending on the region) probably due to Avar influence. I also don't agree with the assertion by Eco his work is relativistic because the fact the idea of Beauty changed many times by itself doesn't mean by itself it's relativistic in any way. My only great issue with this book is that the editing was bad and there wasn't a proof read (for instance, the dates of some art works were wrong or the descriptions were exchanged, especially in the initial pages).

Finally, unlike what some people say, this isn't properly a work of Art History (because it's goal isn't art in itself, although beauty is highly related to it and this is useful for art historians), but instead of semiotics (more specifically of semantics, as the perceptions of Beauty in the "western world" since Ancient Greece are discussed).

13. by Marcus Aurelius
Finish date: 27th March 2015
Genre: Philosophy
Rating: B-
Review: This book is simply unique: it's a sort of philosophical "diary" of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius (r. 161-180) while he ruled over the destiny of Rome, which captures very well Stoic philosophy (even if the author wasn't an outspoken one and disagreed in some cases with other Stoic philosophers, embracing some views from other philosophical schools). It also brings a side rarely explored in Roman History: the Emperor as a mortal and human man and not a god. Really the feelings and the style expressed in the bookare so direct and intense that it's very easy to view Meditations through a modern and incorrect lens, especially as his fear of death, his view of Nature and the "Whole", his inner fortress and how Mankind should live according to the laws of Nature and wait for its unavoidable fate of death (even if influential later) are very typical of Stoic philosophy and his age. It's hard to decipher who he's referring to in specific when he talks about other men, although I've some suspicions in some cases, like when he talks about disloyalty (although the content is very general, is he reflecting on the rebellion of Avidius Cassius besides general incompetence and treason around him? I'm not an expert on these topics, so perhaps a classicist should correct me and give his opinion).

The grade I give to this book isn't properly because of Marcus' brilliant writing (it would deserve an A+), but rather the Penguin's English translation, which has some issues especially in using words whose concept didn't exist at the time, like "homosexual" or "sin" (even if Seneca comes close to such a concept), which came much later, and that doesn't give me any trust on the details of this translation, besides some prejudices (for instance when Commodus is called "worthless" right at the beginning). It seems the next time I'll read primary sources I should do it in their original language, so that I read exactly what the authors wrote. That's a pity because my work becomes much harder (learning Arabic, ancient Greek, Syriac, classical and medieval Latin will give me a lot of headaches and this is just the tip of the iceberg for someone with my interests).

14. by D.M. Gill (no photo)
Finish date: 27th March 2015
Genre: Art History
Rating: D+
Review: This book makes people who don't know anything about the topic learn something new, but it has some awful mistakes (like considering 14th century Sicily was ruled by the Normans) and is very badly organized as it jumps right away to the Insular style without reflecting the origins of the illuminated manuscripts in Late Antiquity besides not even referring medieval Roman or Islamic manuscripts and the chapter on Jewish and Hispanic art is very poor. The art works aren't analized as well and the author confuses an epilogue with a conclusion, while the book itself is very small for the subject.

I hate books that are full of mistakes....doesn't say much for the author or the publishing house. I'm surprised you finished it but I know how hard it is to put down a book unfinished!

BTW, you don't need the author avatar if there is no photo, just the link with (no photo) noted.

Jill, I don't know how this happened... Perhaps it was because of my hurry. :(

José Luís wrote: "13. by Marcus Aurelius
Finish date: 27th March 2015
Genre: Philosophy
Rating: B-
Review: This book is simply unique:..."

Was surprised by your rating at first, but glad to get the heads up about it being an evaluation of the translation, not the writing. Your description of the book's structure is helpful to me--reading the book seems more realistic for me now. Thanks!

You're welcome, Judy! I hope you may like it.

15. by Alan Cameron (no photo)
Finish date: 31st March 2015
Genre: History
Rating: A
Review: I surely wasn't expecting such a brilliant work. It was recommended to me by Nicola Bergamo, an Italian "Byzantinist" who is working on this field, to make my knowledge on this area bigger.

Cameron here debunks the theories that the circus factions were political or religious parties, militias and that the whole of the city was divided between them and instead presents the view that the "factions" of the 5th-6th centuries Roman Empire were formed by a few hundreds (at best 2400 people, as seen by statistics at Constantinople from the reign of Maurice) who were in fact a mix of theatre and circus clacques (merged for political purposes) which fought each other not for political, but instead because of sporting reasons or due to the actions of pantomimes (effectively many cities hadn't hippodromes and yet the "Greens" and the "Blues" existed). He makes very solid scholarship and just makes one or two odd trivial mistake (like the dates of birth and death of Sidonius Apollinaris and his claim that Constantine X was deposed by a popular riot) and I don't think he supports his idea that the factions declined in the 12th century (he could have at least proved that they didn't exist any more in the 13th century or in the late 12th by using the silence of the coetaneous sources and he ends up speculating a bit about the conection between their decline and the move of the imperial residence from the Great Palace to the Blachernae) even if I generally agree with him on that.

Concluding, this a very good book even if a bit outdated (it was written in 1976).

APRIL

16. by Donald M. Nicol (no photo)
Finish date: 2nd April 2015
Genre: History
Rating: B
Review: This book is a good account of the times of Constantine XI Palaiologos, the last Roman Emperor (r. 1448-1453) and his misfortunes (despite his competence and bravery). It explains well the events around him, but I must warn that the details on the siege of Constantinople are relatively succint. That's acceptable bacause this isn't a book on the siege of Constantinople. It also gives a very good light on the transformations of his image after his death and the use of profecies around him to bolster the Megali Idea and the Russian ideology of "The Third Rome".

Despite Nicol's clear competence (by the way his style of writing is very readable), I have 4 small issues.

The first of them is that I don't think the man behind the office wasn't represented enough (especially on the first chapters), even if that's a very tough task considering the relative scarcity of materials regarding the imperial private life (if there was one) and the fact an Emperor was almost always represented in a stylized way. That's the case of his surviving seals where it's more the office and not so much the person is being depicted, as the imperial crown appears on the top of Constantine's head (he was never crowned). This is important because Nicol's work is supposedly partly a biography. At least that attempt wasn't completely unsucessful.

The second one is his romantic assertion on page 89: "[..] On the whole it is perhaps best to accept one or other version of what the last Byzantine historians have to say about Constantine's death. It is certainly kinder on the memory of one who was without a doubt a courageous man of action, 'a prince worthy of immortality', as Sagundino called him." Although he backs very well his opinion that Constantine XI was at least killed and probably beheaded, it gives the idea he's being backed by very strong emotions. A historian should try to abstain from that as much as he can.

Besides that his last chapter, even if it's interesting to know about the fate of the Palaiologoi (namely those who went to England) and all its associated impostors, was a bit out of the subject of the title.

Finally, I felt much of his material on Constantine's life and the setting he lived in (especially on the former chapter) was reused material from his other book The Last Centuries of Byzantium, 1261-1453, which was constantly referred to on the footnotes. I hate when this happens.

Even if it has its flaws, this book is recommended for all those who want to learn more about Constantine XI.

P.S.- The pun the author made with Constantine, The Last Emperor Of The Greeks (the only other monograph on the Emperor in English, published in 1892 by Chedomil Mijatovich) is fun.

by Donald M. Nicol (no photo)

by Chedomil Mijatovich (no image)

17. by Roger Crowley
Finish date: 5th April 2015
Genre: History
Rating: B-
Review:
This is a book on the naval wars between the Spanish monarchy, the Knights of Saint John and sometimes Venice on one hand the Ottoman Empire (including the Babary Coast pirates, who were loyal to the Empire during this period), with a greater focus on the siege of Malta of 1565 and the battle of Lepanto (1571).

It's a nice introduction for those who want to know more about the subject and the book's style is very compelling for reading, but sometimes Crowley makes stupid comparisons with more modern times (like calling Algiers a "Soviet gulag") and the whole rhetoric ends up being a bit too sensationalistic. By the way, he doesn't know what the mediterranean climate is (he says it's equatorial, but actually has its own Mediterranean climate, which is subtropical) and devaluates too much the wealth of the Mediterranean of the 16th century (how can someone explain piracy in this case without wealthy trades routes?).

18. by Stacy Schiff
Finish date: 15th April 2015
Genre: History
Rating: C
Review: I feel a bit divided over this book. While it successfully destroys many Roman biases against Cleopatra and myths, Schiff inflates Cleopatra’s genius quite a bit and her admiration for the Queen becomes too obvious. I’m neither very convinced she was a great strategist (although she was surely a very shrewd politician) nor that Marc Anthony’s end was due to her (she played an important role in Actium, but Anthony wasn’t exactly brilliant in any account and decidedly much worse in political terms than Octavian). In fact it seems to me that the famous Egyptian queen was in many ways a political pawn for Caesar and Anthony tried unsuccessfully to do the same with her (he wasn’t aided by the lack of reinforcements from Italy).

Besides that she commits some mistakes like saying Egypt’s economy was very close to a “Communistâ€� one and other smaller gaffes (the tea set was funny, because even if it has a wider meaning in English nowadays, I think this term isn’t very adequate for the time period as there was no tea in the “Westâ€� at Cleopatra’s time!). I also think she exaggerates regarding the importance of Cleopatra to Roman women (she gives the idea they had the same status as in ancient Greece when that’s far from being the truth) or of Alexandria to the Hellenization of Latin culture and the “urbanistic reformsâ€� of Augustus as these processes were already going on for long periods of time (the beginning of the impacts of the Hellenistic civilization on the Roman one dates from the early 2nd century B.C., for instance, if we don’t count influences from Magna Graecia or through the Etruscans).

Anyway, Cleopatra: A Life� has a very compelling writing style. Stacy Schiff must be praised for bringing to the greater public much research that puts many claims by Plutarch, Dio and even the writers of the Augustan literature in question and showing something about the woman behind the myth of the evil and lustful woman (a result of typical Classic propaganda against women who enjoyed positions of power) despite all the exaggerations about the qualities of this queen.

19. by Ana Rodrigues Oliveira
Finish date: 23rd April 2015
Genre: History
Rating: B+
Review: A good, but non-exhaustive, introduction to daily life in medieval Portugal for everyone who might be interested in learning more about the topic. Despite a few flaws like claiming on chapter 6 (on medieval education) Afonso Henriques was educated by the lords of Maia (actually he was probably raised by ErmĂ­gio Moniz, the older brother of Egas Moniz, like Mattoso hypothesized, and surely by the house of Ribadouro. For the former house the author might have referred the likely role Soeiro Mendes da Maia had as guardian of Contess Teresa and regent of the County of Portucale in the first years of Count Henry's reign) or saying the wars of Sancho II (a very unjusticed King) were a failure (despite the siege of Elvas of 1226) when discussing the extent of royal power and its implications on the Portuguese society, it's very pleasurable to read and dispels successfully many myths on the Middle Ages.

I stopped reading this book wishing for much more (it was very positive since it meant the content and the author's approach excited me a lot), but I understand this book's main audience might be a larger audience.

MAY

20. by José Saramago
Finish date: 1st May 2015
Genre: Historical fiction
Rating: A+
Review: I had already read Baltasar and Blimunda, but now I reread it as school work and I'm very glad for doing that.



Saramago, showing a huge skill in manipulating time and focalization, weaves masterfully 4 lines of action in this work: John V of Portugal’s megalomania and his court, the construction of the monastery-palace of Mafra (and how the common people struggled to build it), the story of Baltasar and Blimunda and the construction of the “passarolaâ€� by the couple and Bartolomeu de GusmĂŁo. This weaving mixes History and fiction so well to the point it’s sometimes hard to distinguish them (for example, the relationship between the Queen Anne Mary and the “Infanteâ€� (Prince) Francisco is inflated with fiction: it’s known that the Prince tried to seduce his sister-in-law in 1715 while she was the Regent due to John V’s illness, mimicking in that way their father Peter II, but in the story it’s also imaginated that the Queen had erotic dreams with her brother-in-law which disappeared after his attempts of usurpation).



In this historical novel, where a Marxist point of view and the methods of the “Nouvelle Histoireâ€� are used, the great heroes aren’t the Portuguese King and his court, but instead the forgotten common people, particularly those who built the palace of Mafra (that’s why the Portuguese edition is called Memorial do Convento or Monastery’s Memorial in English), who were exploited to the tilt by the Portuguese “Ancien RĂ©gimeâ€� and the Catholic Church. In fact, the sovereign is ridiculed due to his megalomania and egocentrism (he went to the point of desiring a basilica of St. Peter’s in Lisbon, a desire widely shared by the Portuguese clergy and aristocracy in the 18th century), his lack of sense of State and mismanagement (besides the huge corruption and lack of justice) of Portuguese finances and wealth (the dialogue created between John V and his treasurer is one of the points in this book where the critiques are clearer) and his political marriage with the Queen. The entire court is criticized due to its rituals, wealth (in a country where most were very poor) and political and social oppression of the lower classes. To add to this, the Church is also heavily criticized both on its theology (Saramago was an atheist) and the habits of the corrupt priests and monks (to don’t refer nuns like the famous Paula of Odivelas, also referred in the novel), besides the actions of the Portuguese Inquisition that I’ll refer to later. By this the modern Portuguese society was criticized for the exploitation of the lower classes, the tyranny of the government (particularly Salazar’s dictactorship) through the orders of the King and on a religious level by the Inquisition (used to criticize PIDE, the Portuguese secret police between 1945 and 1969), its superstition and in the case of the lower classes the way how they allowed themselves to be explored. I just think that he was too negative regarding the King and didn’t reflect his brighter cultured side as well.



Baltasar and Blimunda, an ex-soldier without a hand and a woman who can see everything in the world under abstinence who meet in a “auto-de-fĂ©â€� by instances of her mother going to exile in Angola, make a transgressor couple in many ways, as their free relationship isn’t sanctified by the Catholic Church and is completely the opposite of marriages in this period, typified by the Royal couple, as the former really love each other (the promise of Blimunda to Baltasar of never seeing him “from insideâ€� and the final union of the wills of the two lovers are very emotional), while the Kings had a marriage only for political and reproductive reasons, without any feelings or pleasure and full of court ceremonial including on the bedchamber (chapter I gives a very funny and good view of that). That makes them the main characters of this story, as they are praised by the author for their true love and “rightâ€� attitudes, with the contrast between the two mentioned couples making a critique of the rights of women in modern times (the author also refers to it in chapter III, when he describes the way how women cheated their husbands during Lent while they went to the churches of Lisbon to pray). That’s just one (although perhaps the most important) of the many transgressions by Saramago, since he also breaches all rules regarding traditional History (as I wrote before), religion (he puts many heretic attitudes on the minds and attitudes of clergymen and the King, ironically showing even they can’t be true to their supposed beliefs) and his oralizing writing style that doesn’t respect usual punctuation rules on purpose, besides the issue of the “passarolaâ€�.



The fourth action of the story, as written previously, is the construction of the “passarolaâ€�. In real History Bartolomeu de GusmĂŁo (a Portuguese priest and scientist born in Brazil) designed what many people think to be the first balloons in History (they were small), which flew without crew twice and there was also a patent of a flying machine, but in the story the inventor recruits Baltasar and Blimunda for the construction of the machine (forming a Holy Trinity), which, after the priest’s trip to Holland, uses human wills to fly (representing the accomplishment of human dreams through the work of people animated by their will of accomplishing dreams) collected by Blimunda from dying people (making her sick, but she was cured by Domenico Scarlatti’s music, reflecting the creative power of music that induces dreams). The machine finally flies when the Inquisition tries to catch Bartolomeu, but it crashes and is then kept by the fictional couple (the inventor dies in Toledo in 1724, as it happened historically) until Baltasar accidentally flies while repairing the machine and is caught by the Inquisition in 1730, dying burned in an “auto-de-fĂ©â€� nine years later, sacrificed a bit like Christ in the sense he was killed by the establishment for his dream (not accidental, since he was the Son in the Trinity) despite the obvious differences in the “modus operandiâ€� of the executions.

Concluding this very long review, Baltasar and Blimunda is a masterpiece of magical realism (I'm not its greatest fan, but this work is an exception within this genre) and historical romance clearly worthy of a Nobel Prize. It’s a fantastical work of art as it weaves time (being very faithful to historical facts he presents, as the distortions lie more in the facts he didn’t write or his Communist views, if we don’t consider the obvious manipulation of some events typical of the literary genre of this work), perspectives, speaking styles (popular vs. a Baroque speech) and makes us think critically about our world and all violations of human rights under the guise of the 18th century. I appreciate a lot how he rescues the builders of Mafra and the general common people from the “law of deathâ€� (the alphabetical list of workers with 1 person per letter is very emotive and symbolic) and how he sets clear that in History those who do the real work of making things are forgotten, often in favour of people who do little towards their credited achievements. I have a bit of more mixed feelings regarding his religious attacks, as I feel he sometimes might go a bit too far, but I understand his views if we analyse hypocrisy in the church in modern and past times as well as many doctrinal problems. Even if someone doesn’t agree with him on political levels, at least some attention to his thoughts is needed, as he makes some excellent points.

Wow...added it to my list.

Skeetor, it's a very good book. I forgot to add the role of irony - it's very sarcastic (and funny), to say the least, although I ended up referring to it when I referred the way how John V of Portugal is ridiculed by the narrator.

21. by John Haldon
Finish date: 2nd May 2015
Genre: History
Rating: C
Review: A very small, but nice overview of medieval Roman warfare. It outlines very briefly (many of these topics are worthy of much bigger books) a lot of issues related with it, including Roman views on war, its diplomatic system, Roman organization for war, the lives of average soldiers and how people saw the continuous warfare that affected them directly or indirectly through imperial requisitions. On that Haldon proves himself to know his material.

Anyway, I think some of these issues weren't sufficiently explained due to the size of the work (I wasn't expectng for much footnotes or lots of technical details, but I felt some explanations were missing) and most maps by Osprey are bad (I guess Haldon isn't to blame for this). I also didn't see why some images such as those of traditional Turkish houses or ox-carts from the author's collection were placed there and the two final chapters were a bit bad because Haldon isn't very familiar with events after the 12th century and makes quite a few mistakes, besides making the usual mistake (this one is forgivable) of saying "Byzantium" wasn't Rome to underline the evolution of the Empire in the Middle Ages (the content differentiation by itself to explain Rome's evolution is completely acceptable and a must, but saying it wasn't Roman is a mistake) when he right at the beginning explains "Byzantium" is an artificial convention for the medieval (east) Roman Empire, thereby contradicting himself (although it's typical of many "Byzantinists" in the academia save for a few in the last years), but it was partly a result of miswriting (I noted those two chapters were more hurried because of some cohesion blunders like not using "on the other hand" in a sentence starting with "On one hand").

22. by Peter Linehan (no photo)
Finish date: 9th May 2015
Genre: History
Rating: B-
Review: This book depicts the political and social history of LĂ©on and Castile from the death of Alfonso VII of Castile and LĂ©on to the year 1300.

It has many interesting details, but I feel that the author ended up focusing too much on the reign of Alfonso X of LĂ©on and Castile (1252-1284), even if he intended to give a greater emphasis to the period, and in the end couldn't manage to tell his History in a clear way for everyone. I actually could catch it up because I have some background on these issues, but I bet many people with less knowledge would have slipped in the first 2 chapters (the worst of them all).

Anyway, I loved much of the facts Linehan wrote and his reflections on the "Learned King", especially on his internal policies and intelectual activities (it's likely he wasn't the author of most of the texts ascribed to him, being only an author in the sense he comissioned them). I also like the title because it's in itself a statement of what was modern Spain at the time: a collection of kingdoms which could be (re)united and desunited according to personal inheritances, although in this period the idea of primogeniture sucession was appearing in the peninsula. It's just a pity the author focused a bit too much in Castile and LĂ©on and didn't give more emphasis to Aragon while forgetting Portugal (even if Portugal was forming slowly its own identity, I think it should have been more referred given its close ties to LĂ©on and later to Castile and LĂ©on, besides the fact that is mucg culturally closer to the central kingdom than Aragon), but that's also the result of a modern view of Spain that is part of this ollection of History books by Blackwell Publications (the author starts by debunking it).

To end the list of flaws, I have one or two quibbles with one or two assertions he made that were in fact sheer speculations, such as the role of Berenguela of Castile in the death of her brother Henry I or the extent of Castilian rule in Algarve under Alfonso X (it seems he probably received its incomes between 1253 and 1267 in a regime close to an appanage, although the Portuguese king was entitled to recover it when the heir to the Portuguese throne was 7 years old) and think he contradicted himself in chapter 4 by describing the complex interactions between the three monotheistic religions and asserting its mutual influences right at the beginning ("The year 1248 provides a high-water mark from which to observe some of the peninsula’s non-narrative features during our period, and the recent death of D. Rodrigo serves as a focus for the most signiïŹcant of these, convivencia, the term used to describe the coexistence of Spain’s three great religions. The signs of this are everywhere, in the melding processes evident in the languages, literatures and verse forms of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, which I do not attempt to summarize, in the MudĂ©jar architecture of AragĂłn’s cathedrals and the synagogues which the law both canon and civil forbad to be built (but not to be repaired),1 in the hesitant Latin signature of the Toledo Mozarab, Sibibib Micael, appended to an Arabic document of 1231.2 As is testiïŹed by the Arabic words for ‘clementâ€�, ‘felicityâ€� and ‘blessingâ€� in kuïŹc characters sewn into the richly embroidered sweat-stained silk dalmatic in which D. Rodrigo was buried, inïŹ‚uences operated in both directions.3 Not even the archbishop whose own cathedral was to be more French than its French Gothic models was immune from them." - pp. 87), and in the end suggesting it was more an elitist issue ("Wrong though it would be to read history backwards from 1300, the question must nevertheless arise how, if at all, the celebrated convivencia of the past can be reconciled with the agonies that lay ahead. It is a question one answer to which has already been suggested here: that convivencia is largely a thing in the mind of modern scholars and, so far as the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were concerned, largely one of the best minds of the age, largely an elitist thing. The answer may therefore be thought to lie somewhere between MĂĄrquez Villanueva, with his talk of truce or dis- armament between the three religions ‘at a collective levelâ€�, and Tolan and his insistence on the ‘key role (...) played by the afïŹrmation of the superiority of Christianity and the denigration of Judaism and Islamâ€�.39 Historians ought not to be surprised when rufïŹans behave badly." - pp.95). It's true not all interactions between religious communities were peaceful even inside the same realm and that the treatment of Jews and Muslims started worsening in this period, but discarding in such a way all the other side of the coin seemed to be illogical. At least the evolution of the idea of "holy war" in the period in the Peninsular mindset was well told and Linehan doesn't fall in certain modern political traps on the issue.

Anyway, I loved much of the facts Linehan wrote and his reflections on the "Learned King", especially on his internal policies and intelectual activities (it's likely he wasn't the author of most of the texts ascribed to him, being only an author in the sense he comissioned them). I also like the title because it's in itself a statement of what was modern Spain at the time: a collection of kingdoms which could be (re)united and desunited according to personal inheritances, although in this period the idea of primogeniture sucession was appearing in the peninsula. It's just a pity the author focused a bit too much in Castile and LĂ©on and didn't give more emphasis to Aragon while forgetting Portugal (even if Portugal was forming slowly its own identity, I think it should have been more referred given its close ties to LĂ©on and later to Castile and LĂ©on, besides the fact that is much culturally closer to the central kingdom than Aragon), but that's also the result of a modern view of Spain that is part of this collection of History books by Blackwell Publications (the author starts by debunking it).

Concluding, despite some misorientation regarding the book's aims and audience, it isn't a bad work of scholarship on the issue especially if the reader is barely familiar with the subject, although experts won't find many new things. Linehan is nonetheless a fine scholar and I'm hoping to read more books from him without a "ration of words" which doesn't help at all in crafting complex narratives. Considering he had a restrictive limit of words, what's delivered, if not excellent, is good enough and could have been much worse than it is if it had been written by a worse historian.

23. by Jerome L. Rosenberg (no photo)
Finish date: 30th May 2015
Genre: Science
Rating: C-
Review: This is a quick survey of several topics of Chemistry - with high school and University content. Although I'm not the fan of the tone of the cover, I gave it a try as part of my study for my Chemistry and Physics final as I saw it resting in my school's library. I made a few revisions through here while learning a few things, but this book is badly organized (I think chapters are a bit misplaced like chapters 7 and 15).

There are a few mistakes like claiming a strong base is ionized in the presence of water when actually it's dissociated, which means that the chemical bond that forms the ionic compound (in this case, as we can also talk about dissociation of molecules) is broken. For instance, in NaOH (sodium hydroxide) the ionic bond between the Na+ ion and the hidroxide (HO-) is broken in the presence and that very strong base is dissociated into its two composing ions.

The titration curves are also a bit problematic to say the least since there's a kind of small zig zag around the point of equivalence (in the transition zone) and that can't happen. I'm quite sure the graphics are wrong because I used a ruler to see if there were two assigned pH values to a single value of added volume (a simple geometric way of seeing whether a graph can be described mathemmatically by a function). Although it was slight, it was enough for my eyes to spot it.

JUNE

24. by Jonathan Harris
Finish date: 18th June 2015
Genre: History
Rating: B+
Review: This work is clearly a reference on its field and I advice you to read Lucas' review (I'll try to refer some aspects that he didn't refer or reinforce some others. Harris' argument is very well argued and I think his main conclusions regarding the role of the Crusades on the medieval Roman Empire as well as about interactions between Romans and "Latins" are right. I loved his conclusion that the actions of the crusaders in 1204 were caused by the western view that the heretic and schismatic "Greeks" had to contribute towards crusading efforts and his analyzis of Roman foreign policy as well as of the "Latinokratia", yet I think the initial picture of the consequences for the Romans of the Crusades was very favourable because the First Crusade allowed Rome to retake as much of Asia Minor as Alexios I could, although I acknowledge the situation with Bohemond I was very dangerous.

Regardless of how much I might diverge slightly from Harris regarding this issue, the grade was a bit lowered both because the second edition didn't have any editing work (it's full of typing mistakes with "i" and "l" letters, which is shameful for such a scholarly work, although it isn't the fault of Jonathan Harris) and I think the concept of "translatio imperii" advocated by the author (not only by him, but he surely defended it on this book while analyzing Roman political ideology) is in my view artificial and should have been better fundamented.

25. by Francisco Sande Lemos (no photo)
Finish date: 24th June 2015
Genre: History; Archaeology
Rating: B+/A-
Review: This is a relatively brief and bilingual (with texts both in Portuguese and English) archaeological guide of CitĂąnia de Briteiros, a very important pre-Roman "castro" (a kind of urbanized hill fort for those who have never heard about the "castro" culture) close to Braga, in Portugal. I enjoyed this guide a lot because it offers in a clear and accessible language (something essential in such a text) a very good introduction to this site and all aspects of daily life and society from what has been excavated in the last century while underlining the huge lack of knowledge we have of the proto-historic cultures of the Peninsular Northwest (this is excellent, because some people think historical knowledge is immutable and we know very little about the people inhabiting this kind of settlements). It also has a bibliography of important works for people who may desire to know more about the subject (althoug most of it is in Portuguese or Spanish)

I learned quite a few details from it, especially about the Romanization of what's nowadays northern Portugal that can still be seen at the later stage of this site and was the cause of its decline in the later half of the 1st century AD, and recommend it for those who visit CitĂąnia de Briteiros and want to learn more about it.

26. by Jorge de AlarcĂŁo
Finish date: 26th June 2015
Genre: History
Rating: C+/B-
Review: The book here very shortly reviewed is the Portuguese translation of the first volume of "Roman Portugal" by Jorge de AlarcĂŁo and is quite an interesting work despite its flaws given the relative lack of books on the provinces of Lusitania or Callaecia (in Late Antiquity).

Here the author makes an overview of several aspects of Roman presence in Portugal, from political History to economy, religion and arts. It had a lot of interesting data, but it is presented mainly as a kind of big list of all Roman remains with a few bits of analysis (but the writing style across much of the books looks more like a big set of lists) and I think that made the book much weaker because it was supposed to be an introduction to Roman Portugal and all lists should be in the other volumes that were published in English, so I think it loses a bit in organization (not that I'm a lover of organization, but it seriously detracted me a bit from the reading). By the way, better maps were needed to make the work clearer when the author talks about the civitates or Roman roads.

Anyway, one of the strong points of the book is that pinpoints how little we actually know about Antiquity and made some very good contributions about the subject when it was published in 1988, even if much information is outdated thanks to the relatively quickly advances of Portuguese archaeological scholarship and many accidental finds done in the last decades at cities like Braga (Bracara Augusta).

Concluding, this book might be a historical reference, but it needs an update and a solid introduction to Roman Portugal for the general public is yet to be written, although this book might be a starter. Now I'm looking for more updated bibliography on the subject.

27. by Francisco Ribeiro da Silva
Finish date: 30th June 2015
Genre: History
Rating: B
Review: An interesting collection of papers by Francisco Ribeiro da Silva to honour his career. I loved especially the chapters about Portugal under the Iberian Union (1580-1640) as they challenge the old nationalistic views over the Habsburgs' reign.