Customer Reviews

British History for Dummies

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When I came across "British History for Dummies" by Sean Lang, my intention was to sift through it as I had with other Dummies books, like my treasured "Personal Finance for Dummies". I never intended to sit down and read it through like I would a novel by Maeve Binchy or John Grisham. But yet that is exactly what happened.

Believe me, I was as shocked as you probably are about that. But it's absolutely true. I just plopped down on the sofa the evening I got the book, and before I knew it I was on page 53 reading about the Romans' invasion of Britain. I was totally engrossed, and couldn't wait to return to the book to find out what happened next.

As an American growing up in the public school system, my exposure to British history was extremely limited. I knew about Henry VIII's beheaded wives, and that England and France hated each other (but was never exactly sure why), and that Queen Elizabeth I sent Sir Walter Raleigh to set up colonies in the New World, and that we kicked the Redcoats' butts in the Revolutionary War after declaring our independence from Britain, and that Queen Victoria was on the throne for a really long time, and the Industrial Revolution started during her reign, and that the workers were so down-and-out that Charles Dickens wrote a couple of books about them, and that we helped the British out in WWI and WWII, and that Winston Churchill looked like a bulldog who gave really good speeches. Oh, and Princess Diana, of course. Yep, that about sums up what I knew about British history.

And then a few years ago, an extraordinary thing happened: I met, fell in love with and married an Englishman. It was embarrassing to admit to him how little I actually knew about his homeland's history. I mean, I didn't even know that Vikings and Romans had invaded England until I was in college. I knew hardly nothing about the Northern Ireland conflict, and most of what I knew about Scotland came from watching the movie "Braveheart". And the sad thing is, I know that many Americans are probably in the same position that I was -- before reading this book, that is.

Lang does a superb job of giving a generalized history of Britain without shoving it down your throat. He breaks it up into nice little sections that make learning about this history manageable. Moreover, his writing style is relaxed and inviting, casual and funny. (He has section titles like "Bad Heir Day" and "Fighting the French: A National Sport" -- how can you keep from smiling?!) But yet not too over-the-top. He does not insult the reader's intelligence, just keeps it real. He gives lots of gems of historical information, without being overbearing. It's a wonderful balance; I'm not quite sure how he pulled it off.

He admits fully that this is NOT a standard history text, so don't expect it to be. In the Introduction, what he wrote here sums it up perfectly: "If your idea of a history book is the sort of thing they gave you at school, forget it. Those books are written by people who want to get you through exams and give you tests and generally show off just how much they know and how clever they are at saying it. Believe me, I've written them. This book is different. Okay, it tells you the whole story, but I've tried to do so without making it seem like one whole slog. This is a great story: Don't miss it."

Now, as with any book, there are shortcomings. For me, there were three main ones, which drops the score from five stars to four. First, ironically enough, the book is obviously written with a British audience in mind. I know this for a fact because there were several times I had to ask my husband for clarification on people or things Lang referred to in the book. While I was lucky enough to have a British person living in my household who was available to answer my questions, I'm afraid not every non-Briton reading this book has that luxury.

Second, there were a lot of noticeable typos. One good example is on page 352, where a section is entitled, "You may have won the won the war, but you can't have any sweets". Also, one of the legendary comic drawings in the book has the word "receive" spelled "recieve". These are basic typos that an amateur copyeditor should have caught, but didn't. (Perhaps the 2nd edition will be better in this respect.)

And third, the majority of this book focuses almost entirely on Britain's political history. We do hear about religion, but mostly how it relates to government and kings. And there are lots of kings (and some queens) to contend with. There is very, very little on Britain's cultural history, about the "regular folk" living in Britain, and when we do hear about it, again it is in reference to government and politics. I certainly understand that a book like this cannot be all-encompassing; but at the same time, I was craving to learn more beyond Britain's governmental evolution.

All that said, though, it's still a great book and a wonderful read. I honestly feel like I know a lot more about British history now, even though the book was often written in a light-hearted style. Lang made me feel excited about learning Britain's history and has made me want to read more indepth about specific British historical people and events. This was a great primer.

Hello, my name is Rebecca and I'm a dummy! England, Scotland, and Ireland to me were: the accents, the Royalty, tea and crumpets, Leprechauns, Oliver Twist, Romeo and Juliet, Monty Python, soccer(football)...basically I knew nothing. I've never had so much fun reading a history book before. If you want really in depth detail about certain events in British History, than this book is not for you. If, like me, you are a complete dummy when it comes to the islands, than BUY THIS BOOK! I'm American and the history I remember studying in school was mainly American History. Yeah, I knew about Henry the eigth and his many headless wives, Queen Elizabeth, The Titanic, Shakespeare, the half truths I learned from movies and television (Braveheart, Robin Hood), but I never understood the big picture. Who were the Celts, when did the Kings come into the picture, when did Scots become Scots and why did they want to be seperate from England? The book is a huge summary of basically every event that took place from the cave men to Harry Potter. I found out why we celebrate St. Patricks Day (I had no idea he wasn't Irish), and why South Ireland isn't a part of the U.K., and what the I.R.A. really is and why they are so mad, and I found out why the Queen and Royalty don't have much authority over the country anymore. Even though the author sprinkles in a lot of his own opinions(hilariously accurate), he gives it to you straight, shows the good side AND the ugly side of the English, Scots, Irish, Welsh...everyone. This book should not substitute for other detailed books. It actually makes me want to read more about certain events, but now I know how it all strings together. It's basically a great book to start with if you are in fact, like me, a dummy!

First, a caveat for my fellow Americans: this book is written primarily for a British audience. The author states in his introduction that he assumes the reader has studied some British or English history at school, but found it confusing or doesn't quite remember who did what. Personally, I'm an American studying English literature, and I bought this book to help provide some context for the works I'm reading for school. At times I felt like I was missing something that this book assumed I knew. Still, since I'm not the book's target audience, I'm not taking off any points for that.

I will, however, take away a star for the book's factual errors. One example is the book's assertion that "'Viking' isn't really a noun, but a verb (or if you're really into this sort of thing, the word's a gerund) meaning 'going off as a pirate': You might say you were going off a-viking for the day." Cute, but the Oxford English Dictionary disagrees. The first half of the word, according to the OED, "was probably formed from Old English wic, camp, the formation of temporary encampments being a prominent feature of viking raids"; the second half is "a suffix forming derivative masculine nouns, with the sense of 'one belonging to' or 'of the kind of'."

But from my perspective, a bigger problem is the way the information is presented. It's hard to get a good feel for the people and places who make up these stories. The author is so concerned with being approachable and informal that he never quite manages to build any narrative thrust. That might seem an odd criticism of a book of history, but after reading a few chapters I found that my head was filled with a bunch of facts without connections or significance. You could piece together enough information to pass a test with this book, but not enough to gain a solid understanding of history.

I still enjoy paging through this book to review the major points, but it's no longer my primary source for learning about British history. For that, I'm enjoying Rebecca Fraser's The Story of Britain: From the Romans to the Present: A Narrative History. It, too, assumes a British audience, but Fraser spends enough time on each event (her book is twice as long as Lang's and contains far less white space) to hammer the important names and places into my feeble memory, while at the same time giving me a better feel for the way it all fits together.

I wanted to read a general history of Britain, and that is just what I got. The book takes you from the very beginnings to present day and is a great overview of Britain's history. I really enjoyed reading it. It wasn't dry and boring, but very entertaining while giving you important info. I highly recommend it. In fact, I am ordering US History for Dummies and hope that it is just as good.

I found this book to be a positive introduction to British history. It's challenging to move fast enough to cover such a wide topic while also giving enough detail to make it interesting. This book focuses more on the kings and queens than on the culture of England. What was most striking to me was how thin the bonds of empire can be within the British Isles and how central religion was to defining the nature of Britain. I wanted a little bit more detail on British imperialism. I felt that the last hundred pages or so were rushed. Also, I was annoyed by a lot of parenthetical asides (go back to my first sentence to see the challenge of writing this history, stuff like that). My biggest criticism of this book is that there is no bibliography. Now that I've gotten a quick intro to British history, I'd like to have something in the "Part of 10s" that the Dummies series offers that offers some further reading. I've taken a Complete Idiot's on the History of the Roman Empire, and I'm pleased that there's a bibliography in that book in case I want to read other works on the Romans aimed at a popular audience.

This is a decent book if you're looking to get a quick primer in British history, but I'm sure that there is better stuff out there. Gotta give this 2.5 stars.

What a wonderful survey course in British History! The author is an authority and provides just the right amount of information for a book "for the rest of us". I was interested in this history because I'm doing genealogy, and my ancestors came over with William the Conqueror and then the Scottish ones were among the Protestants who went and settled in Ulster. I wanted the historical background for this and I got it -- with a lot of humor along the way! This has got to be the first *history* book I've ever read that caused me to laugh out loud while reading!

I highly recommend this to anyone interested in an overview of British history from pre-historic times to the present.

Look at this as a sort of "Cliff Notes" version of British History. It is an entertaining read and touches upon the historical highlights which is really all one can do within the limits of a "Dummies" guide. I highly recommend this to anyone planning to visit the UK - it added immense value to our tour.

My one complaint regards the constant interruptions one is forced to tolerate in the form of relentless references to other parts of this book as well as to other Dummies books. E.g., "for more on _____ go back and read _____ in the previous chapter". Or "to find out more on ______ skip ahead to Chapter XX to the section on _______". I found these constant, sometimes very lengthy interruptions increasingly aggravating the further I read. Especially the ones that referred me back the the previous chapter which, presumably, the majority will have just read! Many paragraphs contain two such interruptions. I would happily give this book five stars if the publishers would remove these annoying, excessive references/pointers entirely from the text in favour of including them as either footnotes or sidebars.

I took this with me on a trip to London because the last time I went I spent half the time trying to figure out the royal family and how British history all fit together. This book was perfect for a tourist's help with British history. I enjoyed the sites so much more because I had a bit of a background of who people were and why they were important. It is a super easy ready and a fun read. It was just what I was looking for, but there were a lot of places where I wish I would have had a bit more information than the paragraph or two in the book.

If I had of had this book when in high school, I would have liked history. (History was not my favorite class in those days.)

as a non british person this book can make you a spesialiesd person in the british history . try and you will see