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A History of the Middle Ages  By  cover art

A History of the Middle Ages

By: Crane Brinton, John Christopher, Robert Wolff
Narrated by: Charlton Griffin
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Publisher's summary

A History of the Middle Ages is the amazing story of European man in transition. It is a dramatic chronicle of 1,000 years of political, social, and economic transformation beginning with the dissolution of the classical Mediterranean civilization and ending with the first flowering of the Renaissance. It is also the story of two new religions, Christianity and Islam, both of which were destined to dominate the mind of every person in those new civilizations arising in their wake. This was the great Age of Faith, a time of darkness and a time of enlightenment...a time of lords and vassals, popes and kings, and commerce and cathedrals.

This great history starts with a survey of Christianity, then continues with an exploration of the "dark ages" following the fall of Rome, before proceeding with an explanation of how Europe coped with, and absorbed, the barbarians who overran the Empire. It goes on to trace the development of feudalism and Islam, and describes the harrowing survival of Byzantium throughout the brutal chaos that swirled about the Eastern Roman Empire during the 9th and 10th centuries. Discover how national monarchies and the modern nation state came into being, how the West responded to the Islamic invasions, and how Christianity penetrated into the farthest reaches of Northern Europe. Understand the dramatic repercussions of the Great Schism in Christianity and how economic change in the West almost destroyed the church. Finally, discover the events which gave rise to the magnificent flowering of the Gothic Age and the explosion of knowledge which subsequently paved the way for the Renaissance. The Middle Ages were the precursor to everything which we in the west consider "modern." This beautifully written history tells you why.

©2004 Audio Connoisseur (P)2004 Audio Connoisseur
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: History

What listeners say about A History of the Middle Ages

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

A Stunning Achievement

The middle ages is one of those cloudy subjects that most people, including me, usually steer clear of. It doesn't seem to have the dash and intellectual allure of the classical periods that preceeded it. Bu that was merely my perception. This long and detailed history of the 1,000 years of history spanning the end of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the Renaissance was honestly one of the most entertaining pieces I have ever listened to. Call me ignorant, but I just did not know how interesting this period actually was. I note with amusement that some listeners objected to the chapter on Christianity, though for the life of me I don't understand their objections. I was brought up a Christian but have not practised any religion in several decades. However, I found the explanation of how Christianity developed to be incredibly fascinating. It's hard to really understand the passions and disputes that occurred in the middle ages without some compass of what made those people tick. I also found the chapters on Islam and Byzantium extremely informative, as well as the chapters that covered the establishment of nationlist monarchies and the achievements of the late Gothic period. All in all, I was hugely impressed by this great work and would recommend it to all but the few zany anti-religious types who probably would never get past the first chapter anyway. There is also wonderful medieval music here and the narrator, Charlton Griffin, is truly superb.

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71 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

An astonishing epic

Wow! This one really pushes the gray matter! I had no idea of the complexity of the middle ages. This really shot my preconceptions right out of the water. It's a little scholarly in places, but for the most part, I thought it was incredibly interesting. I've already gone back to hear some of the more interesting parts again. The opening chapter about Christianity was very well done. Highly recommended! Nice narration, too.

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55 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Magnificent

This rather long history is absorbing from beginning to end. It is actually an outline, and as such succeeds brilliantly. The long period it covers (over a thousand years) is broken out in more or less chronlogical order, though there are a few chapters that jump backward or forward depending on the geography being covered. The reviewer named "zuff" is way off base in regard to content. The authors of this mid-twentieth century text were ALL very highly respected Ivy League professors of note. You can find their historical works and papers scattered across numerous famous institutions, including Columbia University. If you are looking for politically correct history, you will not find it here. Also, this is serious history, so if you're looking for "popular history," this is just not going to light your fire. This is academic history for people with patience who can listen carefully and want to get a good grasp of what the middle ages were about. But it is not difficult to understand. From my standpoint, this audiobook is simply magnificent.

The narrator has a very clear and persuasive voice that is easy to understand. It is somewhat British sounding and very pleasant over long periods of time. Merely listen to the sample.

For anyone wishing to know something about the middle ages, whether highly educated or not, you can do no better than this great work.

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52 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

Insightful and Informative

Yes, this book starts out with what sounds like Christian propaganda. And yes, Charlton Griffin's voice can be distracting in its theatricality (he often sounds like J. Peterman from Seinfeld). And yes, this book moves very quickly. Get past these minor irritations and you're left with a comprehensive and at times mind-boggling survey of economic, political, and intellectual movements spanning the 1600 years from the Roman Empire to the rise of Early Modern Europe. If you've ever wondered where the bourgeoisie came from, why leaders call themselves "Czar" and "Kaiser", or even if you'd like to impress your friends by knowing the difference between a Realist and a Nominalist, this book is worth your time. Skip it if you're looking for a story about knights in shining armor.

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32 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

Avoid this one!

To start off the earlier review by akeelshah, from Edmonton is spot on in my opinion. This is a very badly done work.

Having read extensively over the past 20 years on history in general (it's a favorite hobby) and the Middle Ages specifically I was extremely disappointed in this piece.

First off it starts off shilling for Christianity which presents a several notable problems for a book purporting to be written by scholars of the subject. While it's absolutely without question that the Christian church had a huge and central influence in that time period (hard not to have been when rejection of the church could lead to loss of life and limb)in Western Europe, offering events that are solely supported by writings of the New Testament as "history" is wrong. It's a fairly well accepted bugaboo among true scholars of any of the three main monotheistic religions that many of the purported events and characters are not known or otherwise mentioned in any of the other significant writings of the matching time period.

Moreover there's no legitimate reason to include any of the New Testament material as the generally accepted period for the Middle ages is around the middle of the 5th. century until the middle of the 15th. century C.E. Including events found only in a religious text as "history" that purportedly occurred approximately 400 years earlier is inappropriate. I am a bit tired of so called scholars using every excuse to push their personal religious agenda. If I wanted a treatise on the early Christian church I would have purchased such a title.

Add to this, as has been mentione by several other reviewers, the grating, professorial English accent and the reverb quotes and the work is unbearable.

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32 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

Some of it good, some of it bad.

There are two basic ways to write history books. You can do your own research, or you can read a lot of other historians' books and compile what they wrote into a textbook, ideally by integrating all the other works into one consistent theory. This book is the latter, but without the integration.

It seems to have been compiled from sources written at different times, because some of it is current on medieval research, while parts are outdated. For instance, it seems more to describe modern than ancient or medieval Christianity while seeming to defend the religion more than to analyze it. Later, the authors have no problem rejecting Islamic religious tradition to write that history. This inconsistency is present in other areas than religion, but it's harder to illustrate. For instance, the authors take at face value the stories of the wicked Merovingian kings while more objectively analysing Emperor Justinian's biographer.

Overall I'd say this is a bad history book. Parts are outdated, parts are poorly researched, and parts seem to be written with only a slight knowledge of the subject, as if the writer were paraphrasing other textbooks.

I gave it three stars instead of two because of its range. It tells the history of Rome, Europe, Byzantium, Russia, Eastern Europe, and the bare basics of Islamic history, and while it tells them wrong sometimes, many books don't even attempt that.

The narrator is another story. He is so dramatic it's almost farcical at times, and he even makes otherwise mundane passages seem controversial with the emphasis he puts into them, as when he describes Jesus as having "iron." He's almost as funny as the narrator of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show." Just don't take him too seriously and try to see past his tone to the text beyond.

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27 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

Don't waste your money

Not a particularly informative or interesting history of the middle ages. Worse still, it's biased and the scholarship is shoddy even by the standards of popular history. The material covered is full of questionable generalizations and opinions or interpretations differing form the authors are given very poor coverage. Combine this with the absurd English accent of the narrator and the audiobook becomes unsufferable.

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22 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

About half the book is good audio

A History of the Middle Ages (2004) - Brinton, Christopher, and Wolff ****
This work seems to be only available as an unabridged audiobook (rather than a book also). The information is useful and enlightening, and well worth the time. About half the book is perfect for the audio format. However, much doesn't lend itself well to the audio format, and charts and diagrams showing interrelationships of the discussed civilizations would help. There is insufficient explanation about what the structure of the book is, and how each section relates to the others. In some parts a bewildering barrage of specific information is provided, assuming a familiarity which many readers don't share. The parts that lend themselves well, however, to this format are valuable and interesting, and changed my understanding of the world for the better.

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21 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Avoid this crap

This is a superb example of how not to write history. Aside from the shoddy research, worse writing, the blatant bias of the authors compels them to continuously whitewash Church history. This isn't history. It's propaganda, and not particularly good propaganda at that. The narrator is comically pretentious. It seems to be an attempt at giving the yokels a bit of pseudo-intellectual flimflam to mask the True Romance text and World Book research. If you're looking for a literate history of the early Middle Ages, try Winston's Charlemagne on audio, or try The Teaching Company for some excellent courses.

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20 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

Full of history, well read

I love history and the medeival time period especially, because so much of our culture and language formed during that time. This book covers many topics and does a good job of relating them to modern society, especially in the epilogue. There is much information here and many interesting side stories. However, I found the beginning far too preachy. I understand Christianity was important to Europe and through it people accomplished great things, but all religions have been used as an excuse for almost every war in human history. Pious Christians were no better. This side was not given much airtime and thus the opening chapters seemed slanted. Also, the narrative often jumped over time and space, which was sometimes confusing. I would have preferred it to be more chronological (which it was, mostly). The narrator sounded like a history professor, which was perfect, except for his way of saying "pewnishment", which was distracting.

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20 people found this helpful