Powell History Recommends {april 06}

[ScottP]

GREAT BOOKS AND AUTHORS

-----------------------------------

Having written so admiringly about Prince Henry "the Navigator" in my last issue of PHR (register to get the full version in your inbox by going to the Powell History Mailing List Page), I thought I would help students of history out there learn more about this remarkable man.

To start, however, I want to first warn readers away from anything written after 1980.

I have to say that to peruse a modern historical monograph on any historical topic, whether it's a period or an individual, is the surest way to lose interest in that topic, especially if you are a first time reader. Modern historians, acting either on the premise of "scientific history," that every undigested aspect of the past is equally worthy of attention--or on the subjectivist premise that the history of Western civilization is merely one perspective--or on both!--do little more than obfuscate the past with overwrought narratives, full of minutiae and hateful theses. Works of this sort include "Prince Henry the Navigator," by Peter Russell (Yale University Press, 2001), which readers are advised to avoid like the plague.

Unfortunately, modern popularizers of the past do less damage only by saying less. The quality of children's books on history has dropped so drastically, that I have not found any to recommend since I started looking. An example of a waste of time of this sort is "Prince Henry the Navigator," by Leonard Everett Fisher (Macmillan, 1990).

Fortunately, through the wonderful institution of used bookstores, one can avoid the work of the most recent generation of historians and excavate an almost completely different view of the past. It is through used bookstores that one will encounter two kinds of books that are otherwise inacessible. One such type is books written in the latter nineteenth century, by which I mean from 1880 to 1914. Another type is popularizations of a topic--sometimes in the form of children's books--which can date as late as the 1970s. (1980 seems to be another of the turning points--downward--in the quality of historical writing similarly to 1914.)

Of the first type, I recommend "Prince Henry the Navigator," by C. Raymond Beezley (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1903). This book is part of a series called "The Heroes of the Nations," which I haven't yet had time to sample more widely, but which looks fairly promising.

Beezley is genuine admirer of Henry, and of the European explorers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. His focus is on the life of Prince Henry, which Beezley considers to be the "turning-point, the central epoch in a development of many centuries, which brought "European Expansion" its "greatest successes."

Beezley usefully ties Prince Henry's work to the Renaissance by linking the rebirth of geography that Henry promoted to its classical roots and to the more generally flowering of geographical science during the great reawakening of the West. The usefulness of the chapters on the Vikings and Crusades is less certain, but the purposeful quality of the book resumes when the history of Portugal is taken up as an driving context to the Age of Discovery. One gets a sense of the challenges of the time, and of how Henry succeeded in overcoming them, and push the boundaries of knowledge. Quite appropriately, Beezley's telling ends by tying the story of Portuguese discovery to Henry's great successor, Columbus.

Despite all that is good in Beezley's book, I must say that it rests nowhere near in my esteem to a seemingly simpler and humbler "children's" book written in 1973 by W.J. Jacobs, entitled, of course, "Prince Henry The Navigator". Jacob's book is also a part of a series: the "Visual Biography" series, by publishers Franklin Watts.

What sets this work apart in my mind is that it is genuinely accessible to the first time reader of history, without being simplistic or childish. It is well structured, and written in a clear, flowing style. At only 51 pages in length--including ample and perfectly selected images--you can read it in one sitting. But then you can return to it to even greater advantage, because despite it's small size, this book is packed with good stuff!

Not surprisingly, Jacobs singles out Beezley as a particular usefully reference, but there is no question in my mind that one should read Jacobs first, and second, AND third,...and then Beezley!

I hope some of you will take me up on these recommendations, especially after hearing lecture 4 of A First History for Adults, Part 1 on Portugal and the Age of Discovery! I look forward to your thoughts on them.

Regards,

Scott Powell

[email protected]

[Hal]

edit: sorry, I misread your post

Edited April 26, 2006 by Hal