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Dammit Dan Jones!

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Look, I’m NOT a medievalist. Sure, I’ve posted a thing or two here and on Frontier Partisans about medieval plagues and warfare and misrule and such — as one does. Actually, my most recent post was on the Ottoman Empire and the Taking of Constantinople, wasn’t it? And I did kind of go on a Yorkist binge last winter…

Oh, never mind. What I’m getting at here is that my historical focus is on Early Modern and Modern frontiers, not on Castles and Crusades. I have a massive reading pile that MUST NOT include thick tomes on medieval history.

Dammit Dan Jones! Are you listening? Do you even care?

Clearly not, because this wry and witty English historian and presenter keeps cranking out books that I can’t help but grab up and read as though possessed. The Plantagenets. The Wars of the Roses. The Crusades… Now he’s produced a 600-page single volume history of the entire era, titled: Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages. And, by all accounts, it’s great. I mean, really great. The Times of London says:

Confident, colourful and compelling, Dan Jones’s unapologetic narrative is simply the best popular history of the Middle Ages… This magnificent doorstop is bookended by two sacks of Rome: AD410 and 1527. A thousand years race by in a terrifically colourful and compelling narrative history, with all the confidence, bravura and swift judgments essential to an overview of such a vast time span. Jones also possesses a keen eye for how the ideas and passions of the medieval era are with us still — “for better or for worse,” as he observes on more than one occasion. Equally praiseworthy is its freedom from any queasy, muddy undercurrents of obsequious apology and guilt that dog so much contemporary western historiography. It’s always reasonable and fair. 

My favorite history podcaster, Dan Carlin (who is responsible for luring me into the creation of The Frontier Partisans Podcast) had this to say:

“An audacious, entertaining page-turner. Dan Jones covers a thousand years of history with elegance and panache.”
Alright, fine — I’ve ordered it.
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All (faux) grousing aside — I’m very much looking forward to reading Jones’ latest. His work is always most entertaining, but he’s also quite insightful, understanding in his bones how deeply the era of his specialty resonates with our “post-modern” times. It is my strong belief that we are in the midst of the Fall of Rome, and we would do well to ponder upon the lessons that the original Fall might teach us. Our society is already reconfiguring itself around new “Powers and Thrones.” We need not search for on-the-nose, one-for-one comparisons — that’s a bit of a parlor game. Jones is more interested in resonance than “relevance” and that makes both his writing and his analysis powerful and a pleasure to read. One of Jones’ great virtues is that he loves his cast of characters — mad, bad and dangerous to know as they are. Dead these thousand years, it can be argued that the men and woman of this era made us and haunt us still — and Jones makes them come alive in all their ardent-heartedness, their genius, their folly, their sheer… humanity.
Historical novelist Richard Foreman says:
This is one of the paciest 600 plus page books I have ever read. Powers and Thrones is cannily structured and embroidered with style. The book takes us from Marcus Aurelius to Henry VIII, without a single wasted paragraph. The narrative addresses epochal moments and movements (such as the demise of Rome, the rise of Islam, the Crusades, the Black Death, Protestantism) – which are interspersed with lively portraits of remarkable and representative figures during the period, including William Marshal, Dick Whittington, Charlemagne, and Christopher Columbus to name but a few. Not every character in the vast cast list may be deemed admirable or virtuous, but none are dull.
Yeah, I’m in. Of course I am. The book lands on American shores in October.
Jim Cornelius

Jim Cornelius

Born in the suburbs of Los Angeles, Jim Cornelius grew up dreaming of distant frontiers, of mountain men, long hunters, African explorers. His older brother gave him a tattered copy of Allan W. Eckert’s The Frontiersmen, a biography of Simon Kenton, and the twig was bent. Graduated from...

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