NEW TOPIC! "Great Books for the SCA Tradition"

[Mjccmc01 at aol.com]

Concerning A World Lit Only By Fire:

I think that my eyes started rolling somewhere about the point when
Manchester made the comment that there were no significant technological
innovations of note between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance.
 Admittedly, you could dance around all day trying to define "significant" or
"technological," but please!  

By 700, water wheels for mill drive are in use all over Europe; in 750, hops
as beer wort used for the first time in Bavaria (just for you, Barat); 800,
development of a miniscule handwriting at Charlemagne's court; 870,
development of "musica enchiriadis, a musical manuscript using Latin letters
for musical notation; factories are producing linen and wool in Flanders by
942;  980, an organ with 400 pipes at Winchester Monastery in England, etc.,
etc., etc.

Now, I pulled that information out of Bernard Grun's "Timetables of History"
in less than 10 minutes, and to be scrupulously fair, I excluded any
innovations that were from the Middle East and even from Moorish Spain.  If I
can find that in 10 minutes in from a widely-used source, why didn't
Manchester?  I think he overstates his case to make his point.

Now, to argue with myself, the book, as Gunnora said, is not a bad
_introduction_ to the period.  It creates a pretty good atmosphere with some
pretty mediocre scholarship.  It's sort of like the book equivalent of a
pretty good medieval movie.  Of course, reading Manchester is better than
reading nothing at all, and if it awakens a genuine interest to go further
and learn more about the period, then it has value for that alone.  

Realistically, how many of us got sucked into studying the Middle Ages by
perfectly correct, scholarly stuff?  Most of us got into this because of a
romanticized, pop culture version of the period, and then went on to learn
more.  So, despite the eye-rolling, I'm willing to grant Manchester points
because it is a quick, unintimidating read.

Opinions?

Siobhan