2014 read #77: The History of the Renaissance World by Susan Wise Bauer.

The History of the Renaissance World: From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Conquest of Constantinople by Susan Wise Bauer
686 pages
Published 2013
Read from July 31 to August 12
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5

Continuing the now-inevitable pattern of Bauer's histories, this third (and presumably final) installment heaps up lists of names of kings, popes, and battles while neglecting the rather more important (if less glamorous) processes of social, technological, and ideological change. Despite the title, the rediscovery of Aristotlean logic, after a brief scene-setting summary at the beginning, receives scarcely any mention; the wider currents of thought and culture resulting from the translation movement, or the technological and mathematical heritage of the early Muslim world, or the technological innovations of the Chinese sphere, get at best spotty treatment, appearing in scattered paragraphs and one-sentence asides, if mentioned at all. Gunpowder, for example, materializes only in Bauer's description of battles, slowly making its way out of China into Viet lands, the Central Asian khanates, the Ottoman empire, and finally Western Europe.

Nonetheless, as with Bauer's History of the Medieval World, the wealth of anecdotal detail around historical figures and foibles is so damn entertaining, it's hard to dismiss this book out of hand. The chapter on the Black Death, while brief, is superbly well-done. The sections on Raziyya, female Sultan of Delhi, and Abubakari II, king of Mali and early explorer of the open Atlantic, among others, introduced me to people and events I'd never known of, and now I want to learn everything about them that I can.

Bauer's History of the World, then, is like a bulky, semi-portable Wikipedia of history -- a taste of knowledge that serves as an entertaining starting point, but often frustrates the desire for deeper understanding.