A little non-fiction for variety.....

As historical fiction fans, how much do you actually know about the time periods that serve as a background for many of your favorite novels?

If you're like us, there are some historical periods we are frightfully ignorant, which is fine if you were, say, a finance major in college. But not so okay us history majors.

So when we stumbled across David Howarth's 1066: The Year of the Conquest in an airport bookstore, we were intrigued enough to plunk down the cash (or in our case, the trusty Visa) and dive right in.



Our verdict? This little book (only 201 pages) is a must-read for the history buff. Howarth writes in a marvelously conversational style with none of the pompous, wordy, frustrating pseudo-prose that many historians adopt when writing historical non-fiction.

The result is a very readable, concise look at the Norman Conquest. The players, King Harold of England, William of Normandy, and Harald Hardrada of Norway, are each in their own manner empathetic while the Battle of Hastings is finally presented without all the mumbo-jumbo military strat-egery.

The Bayeux Tapestry depicts the Norman Conquest and dates from the 11th century

Howarth, who passed away in 1991, was a historian for the average lay person. He wrote several books, including one about Waterloo, each imminently accessible and illuminating to read.

If you'd like to understand the real history behind those fabulous historical novels we all devour, do yourself a favor and pick up a Howarth book. You can read it in an afternoon and walk away a tad bit more edu-ma-cated that when you started.


12 comments:

  1. I have this one but haven't read it yet. Good to know that it's a good read.

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  2. I will have to get my hands on this one of these days. You still need to read Hollick's Harold the King. The best.

    PS, go to You Tube and search the Beayeaux (sp?) tapestry. There's a really cool video there on it.

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  3. Well, spank me and call me Sally. I AM an accounting major, and yet I am strangely attracted to the idea of this book. If it is conversational, I might even learn something.

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  4. Short, easy to read history. Sounds perfect.

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  5. SEROIUSLY MUST GET THIS!! I LOVE historical fiction and in my other life I'm sure I was a history major. Thank you SO MUCH for sharing!

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  6. I've had this on my shelf for a while and was hoping to pull it out soon! And now that I saw your review, I went to find it but... I can't. Where did it go? It's so slim it could be anywhere!

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  7. This one is right up my alley. I am definitely a history buff and haven't studied much on this time period since early college years!

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  8. Looks like a good one; I haven't read anything that takes place in that era for a long time (either fiction or non-fiction).

    I'm surprised a book like this would actually be for sale at an airport book shop! Seems like they usually only carry mass paperbacks or best sellers.

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  9. Hey Michele, I have an award for you!

    http://bookblabbing.blogspot.com/2009/11/awards.html

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  10. I just put in my cart, thanks for the recommendation!

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  11. I'm a bigger fan of dry history than historical fiction, and am quite fascinated with all aspects of the Norman Conquest. I read a few pretty bad (and heavy) volumes a couple years back, but this sounds pretty perfect. Thanks for the tip.

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  12. That's the tapestry that inspired the opening credits for Disney's Bedknobs and Broomsticks.

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Fire away!