The Inheritance of Rome

Illuminating the Dark Ages 400-1000

By: Chris Wickham

Narrated by: James Cameron Stewart

Prizewinning historian Chris Wickham defies the conventional view of the Dark Ages in European history with a work of remarkable scope and rigorous yet accessible scholarship. Drawing on a wealth of new material and featuring a thoughtful synthesis of historical and archaeological approaches, Wickham argues that these centuries were critical in the formulation of European identity. Far from being a middle period between more significant epochs, this age has much to tell us in its own right about the progress of culture and the development of political thought.

Sweeping in its breadth, Wickham's incisive history focuses on a world still profoundly shaped by Rome, which encompassed the remarkable Byzantine, Carolingian, and Ottonian empires, and peoples ranging from Goths, Franks, and Vandals to Arabs, Anglo-Saxons, and Vikings.

Digging deep into each culture, Wickham constructs a vivid portrait of a vast and varied world stretching from Ireland to Constantinople, the Baltic to the Mediterranean. The Inheritance of Rome brilliantly presents a fresh understanding of the crucible in which Europe would ultimately be created.

©2009 Chris Wickham (P)2018 Tantor

Wonderful book by a talented writer and historian

This is a wonderful book by a talented writer and historian. As the title suggests, the continuity between Roman times and the early middle ages is an important theme in the work. The author blends secular and ecclesiastical history together in a way that never becomes tedious and provides insight into both the eastern and western inheritance of Rome and the post-Roman Islamic world. It never bogs down in political history and gives the reader a view of the social and cultural history of the period. The narration is great, 32hrs by any single narrator can get stale, but this one never does. Highly recommended

Great content; narrator is a bit dull

There's a lot of interesting, seemingly well researched content in this book, but I'm not really a fan of the narration of James Cameron Stewart. He's not terrible, but he tends to put me to sleep. Much prefer someone with a bit more energy.

Comprehensive new take

Enjoyed hearing this way of telling the events of the beginning of the Middle Ages. Puts a new perspective on it all.
Narrator is a little hard to get used to, but a couple chapters in and the phrasing starts to sound normal due to repetitiveness.
Would recommend as a nonfiction but detailed enough to be interesting history book.

Amazingly readable yet academic

A voyage across 1,000 years and many different places and peoples from Iceland to Iraq.

A Magisterial Survey

Every so often, you read a work of history in which the author manages to combine breadth and depth sufficiently successfully that you're not sure whether you've read a survey or a detailed analysis. Chris Wickham's "The Inheritance of Rome" is one such book. Wickham covers a temporal span of 600 years and a geographic span from Iberia to Iran, and from Egypt to England. His basic thesis -- that the early Middle Ages were neither a complete break from the Roman world nor a seamless transition from it, but rather a sort of cracked mirror of the Western Empire, mimicking many of its aspects in smaller, more fragmented form -- is given enough support to see the theme across various times and places. At the same time, however, he is quick to point out circumstances where the data don't fit the mold, and to make clear that it is the mold, not the data, which must give way. Particularly interesting is his analysis of the later part of this period, where the effects of the collapse of Abbasid and, more particularly, Carolingian power in some ways recapitulated, in smaller form, the effects of Roman decline. A couple of nits: sometimes, Wickham's neo-Marxist lens seems too heavy handed. There are a few too many references to the exploitation of the peasants by the aristocrats; more significantly (given that such exploitation did in fact occur), it is not until the Conclusion that he really undertakes to explain *why* this might happened, rather than presenting it as a historical inevitability. Also, the initial parts of the book, covering the 5th, 6th, and 7th centuries, come across as rather fragmentary -- here they did this, there they did that -- but that is almost certainly a consequence of the equally fragmentary nature of the evidence. These are quibbles.

The narration, by James Cameron Stewart, is also excellent. His diction is clear, his pronunciations consistent (not an easy thing with so many places and names in so many languages). He conveys the sense of the text, as well as its content, something not all narrators do successfully. An amusing tic: Audiobooks are of course recorded in small sections. Stewart tends to speak both faster and at a rising pitch as a section goes on. When he picks up with what is obviously the next block of recording, the speed and pitch revert to baseline.