谁看过a world lit only by fire?麻烦说下简介,还有它的英文读后感,

谁看过a world lit only by fire?麻烦说下简介,还有它的英文读后感,
不好意思我只有50分了,全给了,
我不要亚马逊的简介啊，我要这本书里有关文艺复兴的内容，求看过的人大概讲一下内容啊，因为老师要求找一本有关文艺复兴的书看完然后写book review，麻烦啊

内容均取自网络,保证符合题目要求,但不保证准确性以及质量.
简介：
Amazon.com Review
It speaks to the failure of medieval Europe, writes popular historian William Manchester, that "in the year 1500, after a thousand years of neglect, the roads built by the Romans were still the best on the continent." European powers were so absorbed in destroying each other and in suppressing peasant revolts and religious reform that they never quite got around to realizing the possibilities of contemporary innovations in public health, civil engineering, and other peaceful pursuits. Instead, they waged war in faraway lands, created and lost fortunes, and squandered millions of lives. For all the wastefulness of medieval societies, however, Manchester notes, the era created the foundation for the extraordinary creative explosion of the Renaissance. Drawing on a cast of characters numbering in the hundreds, Manchester does a solid job of reconstructing the medieval world, although some scholars may disagree with his interpretations.
From Publishers Weekly
Manchester's marvelously vivid popular history humanizes the tumultuous span from the Dark Ages to the Renaissance. A one-week PW bestseller in cloth. Illustrations.
英文读后感1（最好不要抄袭,因为内容取自网络,别人也可能读到）
Author William Manchester recently passed away which has prompted me to re-read some of his books. One favorite is A World Lit Only by Fire : The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance - Portrait of an Age. Manchester is often accused of being a "popular" historian, more focused on narrative than getting his facts straight. To these detractors I say, phooey. Unlike many history books which are the world's best cure for insomnia, A World Lit Only By Fire is highly readable, entertaining, and enlightening. Manchester paints a grimly realistic picture of what life was like in the middle ages including the stench, the violence, and the pervasive Roman Catholic Church. He shows the seeds and the blossoming of the Renaissance - the combination of technology (printing press), brilliant enlightened minds (such as Erasmus and DaVinci), and Papal funding that brought about a full scale shift in the consciousness of the Western world.
The book is filled with colorful anecdotes describing the violence and punishments that were standard practice of the time.
Some men, in their search for absolution, suffered almost unendurable ordeals. The notorious Count Fulk the Black of Anjou, who crimes were legendary, finally realized that his immortal soul was in peril and, while miserable in the throes of conscience, begged for divine mercy. Count Fulk had sinned for twenty years. Among other things he had murdered his wife, though this charge had been dropped on the strength of his unsupported word that he had found her rutting behind a barn with a goatherd.Shackled, he was condemned to a triple Jerusalem pilgrimage: across most of France and Savoy, over the Alps, through the Papal States, Carinthia, Hungary, Bosnia, mountainous Serbia, Bulgaria, Constantinople, and the length of mountainous Anatolia, then down through modern Syria and Jordan to the holy city. In irons, his feet bleeding, he made this round trip three times - 15,300 miles - and the last time he was dragged through the streets on a hurdle while two well-muscled men lashed his naked back with bullwhips.
One of my favorite sections describes the complete moral degeneration of the Catholic popes, including the story of Lucrezia Borgia, daughter of Pople Alexander VI, who gave birth to his son. Manchester describes in detail how the selling of indulgences to fund Papal wars pushed Martin Luther over the edge and set off the Reformation. Many important characters of the time are explored including Erasmus, Thomas More, Henry VIII, Copernicus, and Martin Luther. A full quarter of the book is devoted to the story of Magellan and his voyage of circumnavigation. All this and the book is only 300 pages long. It's an engaging introduction to that period of history.
英文阅读感2
This review is from: A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance: Portrait of an Age (Paperback)
Having enjoyed William Manchester's works in the past, and being interested in the material supposedly covered in this book, I was prepared to enjoy A World Lit Only by Fire when I sat down with it. But, as much as I would have liked to, I couldn't.
Manchester states that he's no expert on the period, and neither am I, but even I could see the glaring and seemingly endless number of factual errors throughout the book, not to mention the myths (such as that of "la belle Ferroniere" and Francis I) he presents as fact. The book isn't really even about the Middle Ages, aside from twenty or so pages Manchester devotes to outlining that thousand years of European history. The majority of the book is dedicated to Renaissance and post-Renaissance Europe, and a sizable chunk of that is solely concerned with the career of Magellan.
This would be acceptable, of course, if Manchester's "history" wasn't just a rehash of 19th (!) century clichés and stereotypes about the Middle Ages: that is, a Europe composed wholly of mud, blood, sex, torture and ridiculous superstition, utterly worthless and depraved. And although I'm certainly not a fan of the Catholic Church, Manchester's endless cavalcade of largely unsubstantiated potshots at that institution is particularly annoying. If this book was someone's sole source of information on the time period, they'd be excused for thinking that Europe from the fall of Rome to the rediscovery of Classical culture in the Renaissance was pretty much composed of people expiring from sexually transmitted diseases... when they weren't poisoning popes and burning witches, that is.
So, why two stars and not one? A World Lit Only by Fire may be tabloid history, but it could be considered a guilty pleasure if you keep in mind that it's utter nonsense. The portion of the book dedicated to Magellan is also a cut above the rest. Given that the majority of readers will probably be utterly ignorant about this time period, though, it's pretty irresponsible of Manchester to present a bunch of unrelated half-truths and myths as history. He says in his Author's Note--along with various other veiled apologies--that he didn't plan out the writing of this book in advance and it certainly shows.
If you want to read about the time period covered in this book without sacrificing facts for readability (or vice versa), try A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman, the appropriate volumes of The Story of Civilization by Will Durant (The Age of Faith, The Renaissance, and The Reformation) or The Civilization of the Middle Ages by Norman Cantor. They show that reading about this period can be both entertaining and informative, even if there isn't a bloodthirsty, syphilitic twelve year-old bishop on every page.
阅读感3
This review is from: A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance: Portrait of an Age (Paperback)
William Manchester is Professor of History Emeritus at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. Over the years he has written many popular works on history; this is his contribution to the medieval period.
Manchester's particular interest and area of expertise is the life and accomplishments of Ferdinand Magellan. This book sets up the picture of Magellan's world, beginning with the Dark Ages and moving to the beginning of the sixteenth century. He sees in Magellan a symbolic figure--the personification of the end of the medieval mind and the beginning of the modern age. The last major section of the book is about Magellan himself.
After discussing the medieval mind in general, Manchester proceeds to show how their world progressed and then came to an end. He traces the major events in Europe over a five hundred-year period. He conceives of the medieval mind as being superstitious, subject to the authority of the church, and full of erroneous ideas. One notes throughout the book a pronounced dislike of religion, especially of Christianity and the institutional church. His sharpest barbs are reserved for popes and Protestant reformers. With the coming of the scientific age, he sees the intellectual demise of religion in general and Christianity in particular. Religion is relegated to ethical values and encouraging legends. It is disappointing to see how he ignores the fact that Christianity, and Protestant Christianity in particular, spurred the modern scientific method.
Manchester admits that he depends almost exclusively on secondary sources. This is a major weakness of the book. While writing in my own field (Reformed theology) Manchester betrays an abysmal ignorance of Calvin's ideas and positions and history, accepting the most common stereotypes. He gives a very unbalanced picture of Calvin, and I think of Luther as well.
I would rate this book as two stars, except that his excellent discussion of Magellan's life, adventures, and significance raises it up in my opinion to three stars.
This book is written for a popular audience, and one can see while reading it that he is used to college students. He writes in a quick, racy style that is easy to read and often entertaining. He often writes about sexual topics, more often it seems than called for and giving more detailed information than necessary; but then maybe this was necessary in his lectures to keep his college students listening.
阅读感4
This book is absolutely marvelous. While others may criticize Manchester for not being 'scholarly' and sticking to movements and the generalities of medieval Europe, I say "Thank you!" We didn't read this to be taught "and this king begat this king who begat this. . ." and all that rubbish. We didn't read it to memorize "and this is the year which is considered the beginning of the --- period in . . ." We don't care. We read it because we wanted to know some of the more interesting tidbits that one of the most fascinating periods in human history has to offer us. Thats what makes history intresting! Not the dates of certain reigns of certain monarchs, but what those monarchs actually did that our World History books back in tenth grade failed to mention, being deemed inappropriate for 15 year olds. I encountered this book in an AP European History course, and of the 17 members of the class, I can't name a one that regretted taking time out of the summer before their senior year to read this book. Intresting books like this are what inspired me to become a history major, and I have no clue as to why anyone would want to go into History if all it was was boring dissertations and thesises having solely to do with what generally happened when. Without facets of history like the ones presented in this book, no one in there right mind would ever give a second thougt to the subject. Also, I myself am a Catholic but have the good sense to recognize the shortcomings of past leaders and their practices. To say that A World Lit Only by Fire is unfairly Anti-Catholic for airing some of the dirty laundry of Renaissance popes is comparable to saying that Schindler's List is unfairly Anti-German for presenting them in an unfavorable light.