Customer Reviews

The Renaissance in Europe

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I used this in a Renaissance/Reformation course and it works reasonably well. The author (King) combines political and cultural history, getting away from a one-dimensional approach to the period. The first half of the text is especially nice, providing students with some historical context and treating art and humanism at length. The later chapters are a bit less connected, especially when King goes beyond Italy to consider Northern humanist movements and characters, but they are still valuable and hit the "highlights" one would want. Chapter 9 "The Renaissance and the Two Reformations" is the most problematic to me, simply because SO much is crammed into one chapter. But in King's defense, it's not meant to be a text on the Reformation, so she wasn't really obligated to treat that concept (or movement(s)) in any depth. Students who read the textbook (a rare breed these days) find it extremely useful and a good compliment to primary sources and lectures.

If you are a very maticulous reader, the book is filled with details not likely to be included in other texts. However, the book frequently goes off into random places and is difficult to grasp in terms of defining a concrete timeline. While not an impossible read, the organization and excessive details make this text a bit tedious.