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Summary: Fascinating history, great story
Review: Norwich is a storyteller as much as he is a historian. He resembles Barbara Tuchman -- you might not base a doctoral thesis on his work, but he certaily provides a great read. In many ways, this work is superior to his Byzantium trilogy. This may be because he has bitten off a more managable slice of history. This allows Norwich to go deeper on the main personalities and events he is covering. You really come a way with a feeling for this remarkable adventure of the Normans in Southern Italy and the advanced and powerful state they were able to create. It also highlights thier impact on the crusades, Byzantium, and the broader struggle between the Pope and secular power. I really enjoyed this book -- so much so that I travelled to Sicily to visit some of the many amazing artifacts left behind by this underdocumented "other conquest" of the Normans.
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Summary: The Other Normans
Review: The Norman Conquest. That's what you'll discover in John Julius Norwich's landmark work on the Normans in Sicily. Not the Battle of Hastings, but the Battle of Messina several years earlier. This is medieval history at its best, more exciting than any historical novel. Beginning with the ninth century Saracen Arab rule of Sicily, then Europe's most important island, Norwich takes us through the unprecedented conquest of Sicily by northern European knights errant who soon became warrior kings, ushering into European civilization a new era of multicultural fusion. This is an objective, timeless definitive work, still as fresh today as it was when these chapters were written forty years ago. It seems strange to say so about a historical book, but once you start reading this one, you won't be able to stop.
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Summary: Double Your Lord Norwich Fun...for the Price of One.
Review: This excellent volume combines 2 books by the highly readable Viscount Norwich. His history of the Normans in south Italy and Sicily in the 10th and 11th centuries fills a gap in our knowledge of these fascinating mercenaries who-would-be-kings and rings true even today with the impact of Europeans on the Arab world and vice-versa. Remember, the Normans (of Norman Conquest of England fame) were the descendants of Viking raiders who settled in France and their military prowess against the Byzantine Empire and conquests in Italy were just as important as their better known invasion and conquest of England and Ireland in the same centuries.
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Summary: Another great re-telling from Lord Norwich
Review: This fascinating book covers the conquest of the Lombard, Byzantine, and Muslim areas of Southern Italy and Sicily by Normans, originally drawn to that region as pilgrims and mercenaries. The Normans came into their own in 1053, when they destroyed a Papal army meant to destroy the upstarts from the north. They later became Papal protectors and their leader, Roger II, was crowned King of Sicily by the Antipope Anacletus II in 1130. The Kingdom lasted until 1193, when Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II inherited the country.Like Norwich's other works, this is "merely" a well-written, enjoyable, non-scholarly (but why should scholars have all the fun?) reciting of "the other Norman conquest," a history that few people have ever heard of. Norwich's dry humor keeps the reader entertained and amused throughout. For example, after describing Bernard of Clairvaux' complaint about Anacletus II's family's Jewish origins -- "it is to the injury of Christ that the pffspring of a Jew should have seized for himself the throne of St. Peter" -- Norwich comments, "The question of St. Peter's own racial origins does not seem to have occurred to him." Comparing a mosaic of King William I with the chronicler's descriptions of hs extreme handsomeness, Norwish writes, "After all we have heard of William's beauty, that round face, fair scrubby beard and slightly vacant expression come as a faint disappointment." This book is at least as good as Norwich's Byzantium books.
Rating:
Summary: Another great re-telling from Lord Norwich
Review: This fascinating book covers the conquest of the Lombard, Byzantine, and Muslim areas of Southern Italy and Sicily by Normans, originally drawn to that region as pilgrims and mercenaries. The Normans came into their own in 1053, when they destroyed a Papal army meant to destroy the upstarts from the north. They later became Papal protectors and their leader, Roger II, was crowned King of Sicily by the Antipope Anacletus II in 1130. The Kingdom lasted until 1193, when Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II inherited the country. Like Norwich's other works, this is "merely" a well-written, enjoyable, non-scholarly (but why should scholars have all the fun?) reciting of "the other Norman conquest," a history that few people have ever heard of. Norwich's dry humor keeps the reader entertained and amused throughout. For example, after describing Bernard of Clairvaux' complaint about Anacletus II's family's Jewish origins -- "it is to the injury of Christ that the pffspring of a Jew should have seized for himself the throne of St. Peter" -- Norwich comments, "The question of St. Peter's own racial origins does not seem to have occurred to him." Comparing a mosaic of King William I with the chronicler's descriptions of hs extreme handsomeness, Norwish writes, "After all we have heard of William's beauty, that round face, fair scrubby beard and slightly vacant expression come as a faint disappointment." This book is at least as good as Norwich's Byzantium books.
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