Book Blog "A World Lit Only By Fire"

After reading, "Is Google Making Us Stupid," and coming to terms with my own second grade reading level, I decided to challenge myself by reading an actual book. "A World Lit Only By Fire" surprisingly pulled me in within the first few pages.

Just so everyone knows what I am talking about, "A World Lit Only By Fire," by William Manchester, is basically a history text-book, but without the thrill. It is broken down into three main sections: The Medieval Mind, The Shattering, and One Man Alone. The copy that I picked up is 292 pages. It covers the Medieval Period as well as the Renaissance with good detail.

The first section, The Medieval Mind, gives a solid base and understanding of medieval life. The times were greatly chaotic. People had no sense of direction, time, or self-identity. Death was as common as a student falling asleep during first block. Manchester wrote that for every 100 murders only one was brought to justice.

Something that I didn't expect out of this book was attention to the everyday medieval man. This surprised me because there really isn't much to say about him. The average man stood a little of over five feet tall at about 135 lbs. He lived in a tiny hut with his family where they all shared the same bedroom. Rarely would he travel more than a half-mile from his home/birthplace. According to Manchester, this led to inbreeding.

Within the pages of The Shattering, I gained a better understanding of what The Church WAS like as well as some famous figures of the age.

There is no doubt about it that the The Church was a major light in the Renaissance. However, as bright as it was, its leadership "flickered" quite a bit. There were popes with children and scandalous love affairs, and children as young as eight were appointed to the College of Cardinals. For those of you who are not up on the structure of the Catholic Church, the Pope and the Cardinals are supposed to be roll-models for good Catholic morals and leadership. That was not the case. Manchester put an emphasis on the former corruption of the Church. I could go on for quite a bit on the points that Manchester made, but I believe that would take up way too much time.

One Man Alone was a section that was largely devoted to Ferdinand Magellan. Manchester was especially descriptive in these 70 pages. For some reason this section was a little difficult to grasp. Maybe it was due to the late night or the fact that I was really excited to get done. Manchester basically writes on how much of an immortal hero Magellan is.

A comment that I have to make is about the writer. I will congratulate him on writing a book that I actually enjoyed, but I have to denounce him for being so negative. He made the times seem like hell. Most people were apparently stupid, greedy, a murderer or unlawful. This book seemed to be 90% of what was wrong with society, and 10% of what they stumbled upon to be correct.

In the end I was just happy that I read a challenging book. I would also like to say, step-off Google, I can read long pieces of literature.