Customer Reviews

The Thirty Years War: The Holy Roman Empire and Europe, 1618-1648

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The Thirty Years War by Ronald Asch is a very good book on the subject of the political forces and their interaction that came to be called the "Thirty Years War". He looks at not only the policies of the major actors in Europe at that time but also at the area of religion and what factor it played in this conflict. I would recommend this book to individuals with a strong understand of the political factors and major European powers of the 17th century. As for others, this book may be a little hard to follow. A map of the region is provided in the front, but I would have enjoyed additional maps encompassing those specific areas that specific chapters covered to be included in those chapters. I would have also liked to see a little bit more of the military aspects of this conflict to be covered in depth. However, even with these minor request, Robert Asch's book is a great reasource covering a interesting period of sometimes forgotten European history. It should be required read for those interested in state politics and to understand how the European states came into existence.

Mr. Asch is obviously a thorough and competent specialist of the period. It seems to me that he is writing essentially from a German perspective, which is not a bad thing, but his thorough expositions, chapter by chapter, lack the additional dimension one would expect to find in a book describing such an amazing period of European history. In other words, this is accurate, solid stuff but after a while, it takes some effort to labour through the rest of the book. Historians can't be expected to write page turners, but still !