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Anonymous
Posted January 23, 2010
This book goes into meticulous details of the causes and aftermath of the Thirty Years' War, as well as the events and characters during the war itself. For those that adore history as I do, this is an enlightening book. When I learned of the Thirty Years' War in my history class I was deeply absorbed into the teacher's lectures, and I was itching to find a novel on the topic; and then I found the one by Wilson. Also, other great history novels every history buff should read are King Kaiser Tsar by Catrine Clay and books by authors: Alison Weir, Robert K. Massie, and James Reston Jr.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.TemplarMike
Posted November 13, 2009
The author claims in the introduction that this will be the best source on the Thirty Years War ever written, and he is likely correct. The problem with this book is that it simply delves WAY TOO MUCH into background information. The author spends the first 265 pages of the book-265 PAGES!- explaining to the reader the history behind the Thirty Years War, the Hapsburg empire, the Protestant Catholic conflicts, the war in Netherlands against the Spanish, how the Spanish silver trade from the Americas worked, how firearms had revolutionized warfare, how wars were fought, how the Ottoman Empire worked, how the Hapsburg Empire worked, yet never seems to conclude anything. This is like reading Wikipedia for fun-which I do-but worse on so many different levels. Not that the book is bad, far from it. It is actually an engaging read, especially for someone with professional interest in the period. But as a fun, just reading book, not even close. It is an excellent book, very readable, but way, way, way too filled with information.
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More About This Textbook
Overview
A deadly continental struggle, the Thirty Years War devastated seventeenth-century Europe, killing nearly a quarter of all Germans and laying waste to towns and countryside alike. Peter Wilson offers the first new history in a generation of a horrifying conflict that transformed the map of the modern world.
When defiant Bohemians tossed the Habsburg emperor’s envoys from the castle windows in Prague in 1618, the Holy Roman Empire struck back with a vengeance. Bohemia was ravaged by mercenary troops in the first battle of a conflagration that would engulf Europe from Spain to Sweden. The sweeping narrative encompasses dramatic events and unforgettable individuals—the sack of Magdeburg; the Dutch revolt; the Swedish militant king Gustavus Adolphus; the imperial generals, opportunistic Wallenstein and pious Tilly; and crafty diplomat Cardinal Richelieu. In a major reassessment, Wilson argues that religion was not the catalyst, but one element in a lethal stew of political, social, and dynastic forces that fed the conflict.
By war’s end a recognizably modern Europe had been created, but at what price? The Thirty Years War condemned the Germans to two centuries of internal division and international impotence and became a benchmark of brutality for centuries. As late as the 1960s, Germans placed it ahead of both world wars and the Black Death as their country’s greatest disaster.
An understanding of the Thirty Years War is essential to comprehending modern European history. Wilson’s masterful book will stand as the definitive account of this epic conflict.
For a map of Central Europe in 1618, referenced on page XVI, please visit the book feature.
Editorial Reviews
Publishers Weekly
From the Defenestration of Prague in 1618 until the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, brutal warfare swept across Europe. In his monumental study of the causes and the consequences of the Thirty Years War, Wilson, a professor of history at the University of Hull in England, challenges traditional interpretations of the war as primarily religious. He explores instead the political, social, economic as well as religious forces behind the conflict—for example, an Ottoman incursion left the Hapsburg Empire considerably weakened and overshadowed by the Spanish empire. Wilson then provides a meticulous account of the war, introducing some of its great personalities: the crafty General Wallenstein; the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus, who preserved his state through canny political treaties and military operations; and Hapsburg archdukes Rudolf and Matthias, the brothers whose quarrels marked the future of Bohemia, Austria and Hungary. By the war's end, ravaged as all the states were by violence, disease and destruction, Europe was more stable, but with sovereign states rather than empires, and with a secular order. Wilson's scholarship and attention to both the details and the larger picture make his the definitive history of the Thirty Years War. 16 pages of color photos; 22 maps. (Oct.)Library Journal
Castaldo (pastor of outreach & church planting, College Church) writes as a former Roman Catholic who has converted to evangelical Protestantism. He places himself in the "positive identity" camp now—that is, among those who cooperate warily with Catholics in some matters while remaining critical of Catholic polity and doctrine. While some readers may be uncomfortable with Castaldo's evangelism, mild and centrist as it is, his book importantly addresses the mutual ignorance many Christian denominations have of each other, especially at the lay level. VERDICT A useful, if not unbiased, survey of the differences between Catholicism and conservative Christianity.The Times
Peter Wilson's book is a major work, the first new history of the Thirty Years' War in a generation. It is a fascinating, brilliantly written attempt to explain a compelling series of events, which tore the heart out of Europe.
Booklist
Only in retrospect did the strife acquire coherence as the Thirty Years' War, and Wilson incisively cuts through its several phases to recount the objectives and options of the warring parties...Confidently argued, clearly written, Wilson's history is superb coverage of this pivotal period in European history.
— Gilbert Taylor
Choice
Wilson's monumental study captures both the complexities of the political and military transformations and the level of brutality that the endemic struggles unleashed...This will be the defining study of the Thirty Years War for the next generation.
— P. G. Wallace
Sunday Times
[It] succeeds brilliantly. It is huge both in its scene-setting and its unfolding narrative detail...It is to Wilson's credit that he can both offer the reader a detailed account of this terrible and complicated war and step back to give due summaries. His scholarship seems to me remarkable, his prose light and lovely, his judgments fair. This is a heavyweight book, no doubt. Sometimes, though, the very best of them have to be.
— Paul Kennedy
Wall Street Journal
Among continental Europeans, the Thirty Years War is etched in memory...A definitive account has been needed, and now Peter Wilson, one of Britain's leading historians of Germany, has provided it. The Thirty Years War: Europe's Tragedy is a history of prodigious erudition that manages to corral the byzantine complexity of the Thirty Years War into a coherent narrative. It also offers a bracingly novel interpretation. Historians typically portray the Thirty Years War as the last and goriest of Europe's religious wars—a final bonfire of the zealots before the cooler age of enlightened statecraft. Mr. Wilson severely qualifies this conventional wisdom. It turns out that the quintessential war of religion was scarcely one at all...Wilson's masterful account of the Thirty Years War is a reminder that war, and peace, are almost never the offspring of conviction alone.
— Jeffrey Collins
Product Details
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Meet the Author
Peter H. Wilson is G. F. Grant Professor of History at the University of Hull.
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