Civilization of Middle Ages a Completely Revised and Expanded [Hardcover]

The book is long, longer than it need be. At times Mr. Cantor strays from his subject matter with verbose asides. The text can also be rather dry in places. With this said, Mr. Cantor's work more than offsets these weaknesses of style by providing broad content and many excellent insights.

The text flows well -- it's clear and easy to comprehend,
and informative without being overly prosy, or laden with
detail which would overwhelm a reader who is only beginning
to explore the Middle Ages. Most readers should have no
problem reading this book from cover to cover, enjoying and
comprehending all of it, something one
cannot always say about a history book. It's focused enough
to have a coherent flow and structure, while still ranging
wide enough to cover a number of diverse topics; the book
doesn't get stuck in a rut of politics or church history or
some such, the way some introductory texts do.

Unfortunately, the book is made less useful to scholars by
the lack of either a bibliography or footnotes. (There is a
recommended reading list, which I usually avoid, but in this
case it's wonderfully detailed, and almost worth the price
of the
paperback edition to a beginner who wants a list of reliable
sources for continuing study. But although it's a useful
bonus, it doesn't make up for the lack of a bibliography.)
This is clearly a book for the beginner or general reader,
and one doesn't expect extensive footnotes in such
a book, but one does expect to see a bibliography. As it
is, the reader who wants to pursue some point of
interest must begin from practically a standing start. This
is a major flaw, and took about two points off of my
numerical rating.

Aside from the lack of citations, I'm very pleased with this
book. I feel it's a good introduction for a beginner who's
interested in medieval history, and wants more than just a
listing of who fought who, who won, and who was king at the
time. So long as the reader keeps in mind that history
books _should_ be footnoted, and should include a list of sources
used, this is an excellent starting point. I found it to be
about as readable as Joseph and Frances Gies' medieval
books, with considerably less of the lack of specific detail
which plagues the Gies' books -- the Gies' will often say
that something
was done in the Middle Ages, or in medieval Western Europe,
or some similar broad reference, without saying specifically
when or where, giving the reader the erroneous impression
that medieval culture was a homogeneous monolith; Cantor
does this much less frequently. Primarily because of this,
I'd rate _Civilization of the Middle Ages_ a notch above the
Gies' books.

Readers with a firm foundation in medieval history will
likely be disappointed with this book, but such readers are
not the target audience. The general reader will find the
book readable and enjoyable. If the lack of citations make
it less useful than it might be, this is compensated for, in
my opinion, by Cantor's clear and flowing style. If all
historians wrote like Cantor there'd likely be considerably
more interest in the Middle Ages, and other times and places,
than there is now. In my opinion this is at least as
important as source citations.

His practice is to look at several different periods of time from both the government building,the development of the Roman Catholic church and human developments in literature, philosophy, the arts, etc. This leads to some repetition as the same people have an impact in more than one topic. For me this repetition was good as it reinforced my learning about some of the more important people and movements of the Middle Ages.

It was my impression that Cantor is inclined to be much easier in his judgement of the failures of the officials of the Roman Catholic church and kings in the roles they had in suppressing the people of Europe as they pursued a goal of controlling temporal as well as the spiritual lives of Europeans. He is a good historian, however, and as he describes the activities of kings and popes, their oft times ruthless actions are detailed to the point where he contradicts his claim that historians in general have been too severe in their judgements. He clearly shows how these leaders at times formed unholy alliances for mutual support. At times he seems Nietzschean in his defense of ambitious popes, the Inquisition, and kings who were ruthless in the pursuit of their
goals of nation and church building. He does a good job of showing how the ambitions of kings and popes influenced the course of civilization. However, after having read about the horrendous behavior of the kings and nobles of England and Germany and their impact on the peasantry of France during the Hundred Years War as detailed by other authors, I was surprised that Cantor almost dismisses it as just another war in an almost continuous state of war during the Middle Ages.

Like too many good books on history, this one could use some maps and some tables summarizing developments. Overall, however, this un-professional history reader enjoyed reading this book and learned a lot from it but not always from the same viewpoint as that of the author.