Charles Phillips (1)Critiques

This is a useful overview of castles and how they were built using examples from Guedelon Castle, the experimental castle being built in France. If you've seen Secrets of The Castle with Ruth Goodman, Peter Ginn and Tom Pinfold, then a lot of this book will be familiar. The photographs are the best part of this book and allow for many parts to be explained well.

A VÉR ÉS CSILLOGÁS BIRODALMAI
Az enciklopédia az aztékok és a maják (és - zárójelben - más mezoamerikai népek, így az olmékok, toltékok, zapotékok) kultúráját rendszerezi. Az egymást követő népek fantasztikus építészeti és kulturális teljesítménye a Mezoamerikának nevezett régióban - amely Mexikó és Közép-Amerika egy részét foglalja magába - majdnem 3000 évet ölel át. A korszakot a Kr. e. 1200 táján élt olmékok lépcsős piramisai és hatalmas kőfaragványai nyitják, végpontja az aztékok és maják félelmetes városai, hatalmas kereskedelmi hálózata és bonyolult vallásvilága. A hihetetlen teljesítmények sora megszakad, miután a spanyol hódítók leigázták őket a Hernán Cortés érkezését (1519) követő években. A régészeti leleteknek és a fennmaradt dokumentumoknak (kódexeknek, a maják Popol Vuh című alapművének) vizsgálata alapján gazdagodnak ismereteink a mezoamerikai történelemről és kultúráról. Ezek a források olyan ősi civilizációkba nyújtanak betekintést, amelyek úttörő sikereket értek el a csillagászatban és a naptárkészítésben, a matematikában, az írásban és a művészetekben - és amelyek a háborúnak éltek, és olyan isteneket imádtak, akiknek emberi vért ajánlottak áldozatként.
A könyv első része Mezoamerika történelmét foglalja össze, részletesen tárgyalva a mezoamerikai vallást, hadviselést, jogrendszert és időszámítást is, a második rész az azték és maja mitológiát rendszerezi és hasonlítja össze.

I loved this book. It's an easy and very informative read. I was very pleased to see how much information there was on The Knights Templar. This pleased me because this group of people are my favourite group of the crusades. I suppose it helped that I had studied them recently in University. These crusades are a very fascinating part of, and playing a significant part in, history.

The pictures and other details are very well done and really helps to cement ones' knowledge of this part of history. This is a book I want to buy to have as a reference book about this period in history.

Although this book did not interest me, I feel it is a very well written book with awesome photographs. It would be a very good book to have in a classroom if there was a student from Sweden or if the teacher was teaching about Sweden. If these are not the cases, I think the book would be unappealing to the students. On the bright side, the book is very descriptive, breaking up Sweden into five sections, Geography, Nature, History, People and Culture, and Government and Economy. The photographs are very clear and are actual images taken in Sweden during specific times. It really helps enhance the text, especially if a student doesn’t know anything about this country. The main message of this book was information about Sweden.

This book has just about every King and Queen that ruled Britain, and about their heirs, their grandchildren. This book even has a little bit of basic information about them(Their birthdays, the day of their accsession, and the day they were suceeded), all in chronological order. This book is an essential part of every historian's library.

A simple and readable narrative of the Crusades and the main figures. Hardly any citation of sources, but hansomely illustrated. A good read, but not for the scholar.

This lavishly illustrated, large format (9 x 11.6") paperback is a delight to read. Although Charles Phillips tends toward excessive cultural relativism, the incredibly bloodthirsty nature of the ancient Aztecs and Mayans is in no way diminished. Phillips even touches on the repulsion that Cortez and his Spaniards, no strangers to violence themselves, felt upon entering Teotihuacan.

The quality of the paper is revealed by the book's weight of nearly five pounds. In my opinion, this book is worth obtaining for the superb illustrations and photographs alone.

Another beautiful volume in the Myth and Mankind series. Not only were the illustrations featuring paintings, fabric art, photos and artifacts outstanding but many of the stories were ones I was unfamiliar with. The interwoven histories of the Slavic peoples of Eastern Europe was also mostly new to me and was very interesting. This book only took as long as it did because the format lent itself to short periods of reading between other books. However, as noted by some other readers, the title is a little misleading in that there is really not much about vampires. They are just one of many areas of Slavic folklore covered. Recommended but I did prefer Mother Earth, Father Sky. I will definitely read other volumes from this series from time to time.

Interesting histroy of Slavic culture and myth, but not a lot of vampires :( I didn't finish reading it, I only read the bits about vampires and Baba Yaga.

"From the formless mass of chaos appeared the Great Trinity of Hinduism: Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. But they were not invulnerable, and when their world was threatened by demons the gods turned not to their own power but to that of the Mother Goddess, in the fierce and vengeful form of Kali, the merciless destroyer. The Eternal Cycle recounts this and other tales form Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain mythology."

Not Read