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Rating: 
Summary: makes history fun
Review: I was excited when I first picked up New Worlds, Lost Worlds, looking forward to reading about the Tudors, a dynasty I knew something but not a lot about. However, two pages into the author's prologue I began to have doubts. Brigdon provides a recitation of what her book is *not* about, without ever really telling us what the book *is* about - almost as if she is unsure herself. And the book itself seems aimless, endlessly wallowing in topics then meandering onto something else. Brigdon's choices about what information to impart is also less than satisfying. For example, the book opens with Henry VII landing in South Wales. We are given precious little of Henry's background, however - pretty much nothing more than that he was born in Pembroke in 1457 and hid there thirteen years later. Nothing about what shaped him in exile, how he marshalled support for his return, what had brought Richard III to deposition. Instead, we are given a long-winded expose of the land Henry marched through on his way to Bosworth Field. Such is typical of the book, with such long meanderings that the reader feels as if he is wading through waist-high water, able to see the shore but unable to reach it. Far from being "vivid and stylish," as one reviewer has described it, Brigdon's prose seems all fluff and no substance.
Rating: 
Summary: Unfocused and Uninteresting
Review: I was excited when I first picked up New Worlds, Lost Worlds, looking forward to reading about the Tudors, a dynasty I knew something but not a lot about. However, two pages into the author's prologue I began to have doubts. Brigdon provides a recitation of what her book is *not* about, without ever really telling us what the book *is* about - almost as if she is unsure herself. And the book itself seems aimless, endlessly wallowing in topics then meandering onto something else. Brigdon's choices about what information to impart is also less than satisfying. For example, the book opens with Henry VII landing in South Wales. We are given precious little of Henry's background, however - pretty much nothing more than that he was born in Pembroke in 1457 and hid there thirteen years later. Nothing about what shaped him in exile, how he marshalled support for his return, what had brought Richard III to deposition. Instead, we are given a long-winded expose of the land Henry marched through on his way to Bosworth Field. Such is typical of the book, with such long meanderings that the reader feels as if he is wading through waist-high water, able to see the shore but unable to reach it. Far from being "vivid and stylish," as one reviewer has described it, Brigdon's prose seems all fluff and no substance.
Rating: 
Summary: Strong on events poor on analysis
Review: Susan Brigden, Reader in Modern History, Fellow, and Tutor at Oxford, has written New Worlds, Lost Worlds: The Rule of the Tudors 1485-1603. This book replaces the 1950 work Tudor England by S.T. Bindoff in the updated Penguin History of Britain series. The volume is suited for use as an introductory college textbook providing a strong narrative of the period.
Brigden's main goal is to show the Tudor period as one of transition between a series of 'old worlds' and outlooks as opposed to modern viewpoints and 'new worlds'. During this highly eventful period, according to the author, the Protestant Reformation, the conversion of the nobility to one of personal service to the monarch and the exploration of new lands across the Atlantic all were new worlds. The old worlds such as those of a strong independent feudal monarchy, the stability of the old religion and the certainty of an established landscape were all gone by the end of the period.
The text primarily concentrates on a political narrative of the times; it is laden with facts and events. Towards the start of the period, a chapter is spent on the social life of the common man and the social orders. Near the end of the book, there are diversions from the political narrative to cover the beginnings of colonization in North America and events in Ireland. A concluding chapter showcases Shakespeare and the literature at the close of Elizabeth's reign.
The book is both too much and too little to succeed in its goals. While presenting a strong narrative and displaying a wide knowledge of the facts, the work is short on context and analysis. Characters appear on the political stage with little introduction and the reader is left to his own devices to understand the motivations behind the actions. Personalities are often pithily described but without any additional background. Events are well chronicled but the need to cover so broad an area permits little depth. One bright spot is the coverage of Ireland, much more in-depth than is usually found in a British overview of the period.
New Worlds, Lost Worlds, leaves the reader understanding that there were many important events in during the Tudor years. What motivated the people, and how the events related to one another is less well presented. Readers who need to find out "Just the facts" will be very pleased with this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Great book, sometimes a little tedious
Review: The book is a wonderful read. Though required for my course in early modern European history, I still enjoyed it. Everything appears to be historically accurate and cited properly (citations are at the end of the book). However, it appears that Bridgen seems to have a habit of repeating the point from her book over and over again in each chapter, which gets a little tedious. Nevertheless, it's a good book for anyone interested in English royalty.
Rating:
Summary: Great book, sometimes a little tedious
Review: The book is a wonderful read. Though required for my course in early modern European history, I still enjoyed it. Everything appears to be historically accurate and cited properly (citations are at the end of the book). However, it appears that Bridgen seems to have a habit of repeating the point from her book over and over again in each chapter, which gets a little tedious. Nevertheless, it's a good book for anyone interested in English royalty.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent, Wonderful
Review: This is a superb history book, sometimes wonderful. The Tudors are one of the most deeply-researched and pored-over dynasties in English history, and it is easy to think we know the story and the actors all too well. Yet this book, written, as Brigden says, "with awe and excitement", is alight with enthusiasm, curiousity and passion on every page. The things I liked especially included: the author's vivid and stylish prose, so far from the bland puddings of most history textbook; her ability to tell a great story, so that for once you are genuinely curious to turn the page and find out what happened; and the way the book is driven forward by the interlocking forces of politics and religion. History here is no grand impersonal scheme, nor is the 16th century either 'the start of the modern era' or 'the high road to the civil war' - but a tale of complexity and chance. It would all have ended very differently if Mary had a baby. Some things I liked less, though... 1. Ireland, so fashionable in British historiography at the moment, is given a lot of space, perhaps disproportionately. Brigden is clearly not an Ireland expert, and these sections are some of the weakest. They lack the deep reading in primary texts that so colours the rest of the book, and to someone ignorant of Irish history I suspect this book will still leave them thinking it was all a blur of O'Neills and Kildares. Brigden also doesn't really connect the story either - she never convincingly argues that Ireland influenced English affairs, I think. 2. The absence of Wales. This a sad loss, since the Tudors had far more impact on Wales than perhaps any other dynasty, even forgetting their Welsh precedents. Henry VIII's acts of 1536 centralised and united Wales for the first time since Glendower, and far more decisively, while the Welsh Reformation is probably THE decisive event in Welsh history - an event that preserved the Welsh language and laid the basis for Welsh literacy. None of this is in Brigden's story. 3. Economic history is almost totally ignored - which is fine so far as it goes (who wants to read about agricultural prices anyway?), but leads to a perhaps more grievous omission: there is almost nothing here about the urban classes, rising in wealth and numbers, who did much to shape the religion and intellectual history of this period. 4. Some chapters are quite weak: I suspect where Brigden is either really out of her speciality, or just knows too much. "Family and Friends" reads like an edited version of a much longer piece, with all the bones and examples taken out, making it dry and dull. The chapter on the 'Governors and the Governed' is very weak, far too vague to be helpful and a lot of it is covered elsewhere in the book. The static picture it presents is also very misleading. The chapter on 'Elizabethan World Views' is unbelievably sketchy, and the chapter on the New World even more so. It is really the narrative chapters that drive this book, and make it worthwhile - the chapter on Henry VIII ('Imperium') is absolutely outstanding, for example, as is the one on Edward and Mary. These are the shining gems here. 5. Judging by the other two volumes, I think the editor of the Penguin History of Britain has instructed his authors not to discuss the historiography of their periods explicitly. You will strive in vain to find the name of a single historian in the text - apart from Thomas More and Francis Bacon. This is very refreshing, but conceals from the reader many of the foundations of Brigden's arguments - in fact, you could put away this book unaware that probably no period in the history of England or any other country has been as ferociously debated as this one. It would have been better, perhaps, for Brigden to have written her massive bibliography as a true essay, drawing out some of these debates. 6. Finally, perhaps unfairly, I'd like to have known a little more of Brigden's own opinion - what, at the end of it all, did she think was going on here? The problem with the new trend in historical writing such as this, that is reluctant to fit historical events into grand patterns, that emphasizes contingency over inevitability and events over process, is that it can leave the general reader with more questions than it answers. For many, surely for Brigden (and me!), the fascination of the past is more than enough to warrant study of it. But many will want more - and it is sad that a work of such breadth, intelligence, style and passion may still leave its readers asking where to fit the Tudors into the grand scheme of things...
Rating:
Summary: makes history fun
Review: Wow! This is a great history of one of the most exciting periods of english history. Brigden does a fantastic job integrating politics, religion, popular culture, discoveries and exploration and so on. She has a natural talent for compelling narrative and detailed description. Buy this book, and you won't be sorry!
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