Medieval World by Susan Wise Bauer

This book’s full title is Medieval World: From the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade. However, it should be called Medieval World of Eurasia. She includes Europe, Middle East, India, China, Korea, and Japan. South East Asia is missing as its America and Africa. She has her own site here.

However, I did like the book as it covered a lot of history of the medieval world. I liked that it covered India a lot, because a lot of history books tend to just skip over India. The parts of world mostly covered in this book, give a good history of those areas which seem to be her area of expertise.

I certainly appreciated all the maps she included. There was at least one map in each chapter and all the places mentioned were on these maps. Too many history books do not include maps and this is a big mistake as far as I am concerned. Some include maps but do not show on the map all the places that they mention. This is frustrating.

What I did not like is that she says the old canard about Greenland being called Greenland to make it attractive, but it was just sand. However, people who have investigated it looking at soil samples say that where the colony was situated was covered in trees when the Vikings landed. She also gives a very shallow coverage of North America and completely ignores South America.

I must admit there are some very good (and very long) reviews on Good Reads. There is a short, interesting review by Christine at Our Curious Home. This is a link to a PDF of an essay by J. M. Roberts at Open Journals.

Dr. Harry Bleatter, interviews author, historian, and professor Susan Wise Bauer at The King's College in New York City . This is part of The King's College Distinguished Visitor Series and it is just a snippet of the interview and it the whole does not seem available for the public. I cannot find anything on this author and history on video. There is also a short interview with Susan Wise Bauer at the San Diego Comic-Con 2018.

An index of the books I have reviewed are on my website at Books. I have three blogs. The first talks only about specific stocks and is called Investment Talk . The second one contains information on mostly investing and is called Investing Economics Mostly. My last blog is for my book reviews and it is called Non-Fiction Mostly. Follow me on Twitter.