Customer Reviews

The Knight and the Blast Furnace: A History of the Metallurgy of Armour in the Middle Ages & the Early Modern Period (History of Warfare, 12)

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

 

 

This is a highly detailed study of the metallurgy of medieval and Renaissance armour. It reveals some surprising facts and challenges some commonly held beliefs. The level of accuracy and detail are unmatched in this book. It features hundreds of pieces of armour from collections all over the world.

I highly recommend this book!

This needs to be re-issued as a paperback, there is a huge interest in European medieval armor and weaponry right now and this is the best single source on it, the amount of tests they did here and the amount of data presented is very valuable. Somebody please re-issue this or put it on print-on-demand!!

It's difficult not to be truly staggered by the exhaustiveness of this book. It's also fitting that as the culmination of a life's work this book documents the life of medieval armor from early chainmail to the elaborately adorned plate armor that we've come to associate with european knights. Virtually every aspect of armor is explored. The reader is first exposed to the essential theoretical and practical metallurgy that underlies the physical properties of armor. The author then uses this framework to motivate the descriptions of the design, development and production of armor. Of particular interest are the experiments conducted by the author to investigate the fundamental property of armor: protective efficacy against contemporary battlefield threats. Combined with the thorough treatment of the complex, co-evolutionary arms race between projectile and armor, the experimental results are sure to provoke a rethink of many medieval conflicts.