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The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400-1000 (The Penguin History of Europe) Reprint Edition

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Chris Wickham (Author)
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3.7 out of 5 stars 59 customer reviews
ISBN-13: 978-0143117421
ISBN-10: 0143117424
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Product Details

  • Series: The Penguin History of Europe
  • Paperback: 688 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin Books; Reprint edition (August 3, 2010)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0143117424
  • ISBN-13: 978-0143117421
  • Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 1.5 x 8.4 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (59 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #41,837 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

118 of 126 people found the following review helpful
A Really Good Book That Can Be Challenging to Read
By Arch Stanton on August 14, 2009
Format: Hardcover
This is a challenging book to read. There is so much information crammed into every page that you have to read slowly or you'll miss something. And there are 550 pages of this. Having the information crammed so tight doesn't exactly make for an engaging read, but it is worthwhile. This book covers the entire Dark Ages and a bit before, giving a broad overview of the period from the 5th Century Roman Empire to the end of the First Millenium. There is rather a sense of information overload when reading this. Too much is covered in too short a time. Considering how long the book is already I can't see what could really be done about that. Even with all the names thrown at you it feels as if the author is really holding back.

The narrative sections dealing with the political history of the kingdom especially have an impressive number of indecipherable and hard-to remember names forcing the reader to slow down. The narratives are the worst part of this book reading almost like an encyclopedia article. Part of this is no doubt due to the bared down nature of the sources. Fortunately the chapters are reasonably short and the book will soon pass on to better topics. The author is at his best when describing trends or social conditions. Here he really shines and you can feel something of what it was like to live in these societies. Many of his choices of quotes are perfect, giving an idea of the feel of the society he's describing. The first Roman quote is probably the best. It comes from a children's Greek-Latin Primer and deals with Roman justice which was clearly a particularly chilling affair. The emphasis is always on discovering what changed and what caused these changes, as well as determining what made one culture different from another.Read more ›
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43 of 43 people found the following review helpful
Richly detailed
By Carl Gershenson on January 16, 2010
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
The period 400-1000 is a blank spot in the minds of most people, even for those who know a great deal about Rome and medieval Europe. What we do tend to know are a handful of decontextualized names (e.g. Charlemagne) and some stock images of bearded men in leather armor killing each other. Wickham, then, was faced with a formidable task: not just to introduce his readers to the Ostrogoths, the Merovingian kingdom, etc., but also to disabuse us of popularly held notions, like the precipitous fall of Rome in 476 or the discontinuities between Rome and its 'barbarian' successor states.

It's for this reason that I strongly disagree with the reviews complaining that this book has too many details, and should not have been marketed to a general audience. The many details are not the intended "takeaway" of this book. Rather, Wickham presents us with such rich anecdotes so that long after the names and events vanish from memory, readers will be left with a deep (and accurate) feel for post-Roman culture, society, and government. Given how shallow (and inaccurate) my feel for post-Roman Europe was before reading Wickham's book, I consider his book extremely effective.

On the dust jacket, a reviewer describes Wickham's writing as "pointillist." I think this description is apt. As with pointillist paintings, this work's intent can only be comprehended after you take a step back from the anecdotes. Wickham's prose is only difficult if you get too worried about remembering that Sidonius Apollinaris was so-and-so's son-in-law, lived in Clermont in the 5th century, etc. General readers need not worry about the details - Just keep on reading, and be confident that you will finish the book with a different understanding of 400-1000 AD than when you started.
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54 of 57 people found the following review helpful
THE INHERITANCE OF ROME: ILLUMINATING THE DARK AGES 400-1000 BY CHRIS WICKHAM
By Alex C. Telander on October 1, 2009
Format: Hardcover
Many people refer to the period of 400-1000 as the "dark ages." After the fall of Rome, when society in Western Europe shut down, people went back to simple, primitive ways - terms like savages and barbarians are often used - as they squabbled and fought against each other, killing mercilessly for a bit of land; the only beacon of hope the growing light of Christianity. I've never been a fan of the term "dark ages," or all the connotations, thoughts, and ideas that people - historians and laymen alike - infer from it. Thankfully there is Chris Wickham: a Chichele Professor of Medieval History at the University of Oxford and author of Framing the Middle Ages. Wickham has worked hard to educate those who are unsure or simply don't that the period from 400-1000 was one of the most important growth period of ideas, invention, and thought in the history of Western Europe. The Inheritance of Rome does a fantastic job of explaining this in comprehensive detail with viewpoints from all of Western Europe, including the Near East with the Byzantine Empire. I won't lie to you; this isn't an easy summer read; it's a heavy book in every sense of the word; but if you're looking to educate yourself on what exactly was going on between the fifth and eleventh centuries in Europe, after reading The Inheritance of Rome, you will have amassed an impressive amount of knowledge and be able to defend yourself and the period against anyone who attempts to call it the "dark ages.Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

Three Stars

Very well researched, but a slow read.

Published 28 days ago by Amazon Customer
Complex, Yet Immeasurably Valuable

It seems a lot of people can't get past how absolutely -dense- with information this book is. At 688 pages, it feels like an essay from one of those 1000+ page New Cambridge tomes... Read more

Published 2 months ago by Jack H Chapman
Penguin let Chris Wickham down...

Where was the editor, here? This second volume was recommended to me by reading the first volume -- a superb survey by Simon Price. Read more

Published 2 months ago by Joseph P. Nichols
Erudite, comprehensive, masterful, but...

... boy was this a slog! The book could easily have been cut by 25% with no significant loss of content. Recommended, but prepare for a battle.

Published 2 months ago by Stan Mark Kaplan
Packed!

PACKED! Centuries of detail packed into 600+ pages, an informative though not a fun read. Used as the main reference text by a Yale professor re. that era.

Published 3 months ago by Pursuingknowledgeandperspectives
A great analysis of why the dark ages weren't nearly as ...

A great analysis of why the dark ages weren't nearly as dark and the great debt the world owes to those early Europeans who maintained the wealth of culture that was rome and... Read more

Published 6 months ago by Alma Jeanne Carman
Who is the intended audience for this book?

This is a period of history I find endlessly fascinating - the transition from the late Roman Empire to Dark Ages Europe. So I naturally bought this book when it first came out. Read more

Published 9 months ago by Anaximander
incoherent

This book received very positive reviews so perhaps my late night readings failed to appreciate its brilliance but... I found it lacking narrative, synthesis or clarity. Read more

Published 12 months ago by Kamiar Khajavi
Doesn't reward the effort

I was looking forward, for several years, to finding the time to read this book, which stared back to seductively from one of my bookshelves. Read more

Published 13 months ago by P. Troutman
One Star

it was for class requirement

Published 15 months ago by Crystal Martinez

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