1634: The Baltic War

Book Description

The Baltic War which began in the novel 1633 is still raging, and the time-lost Americans of GrantvilleÂ¿the West Virginia town hurled back into the seventeenth century by a mysterious cosmic accidentÂ¿are caught in the middle of it. Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden and Emperor of the United States of Europe, prepares a counter-attack on the combined forces of France, Spain, England, and DenmarkÂ¿former enemies which have allied in the League of Ostend to destroy the threat to their power that the Americans representÂ¿which are besieging the German city of Luebeck. Elsewhere in war-torn Europe, several American plans are approaching fruition. Admiral Simpson of Grantville frantically races against time to finish the USE NavyÂ¿s ironclad shipsÂ¿desperately needed to break the Ostender blockade of the Baltic ports. A commando unit sent by Mike Stearns to England prepares the rescue the Americans being held in the Tower of London. In Amsterdam, Rebecca Stearns continues three-way negotiations with the Prince of Orange and the Spanish Cardinal-Infante who has conquered most of the Netherlands. And, in Copenhagen, the captured young USE naval officer Eddie Cantrell tries to persuade the King of Denmark to break with the Ostender alliance, all while pursuing a romantic involvement with one of the Danish princesses.

Customer Reviews:

Boring.......2007-09-30

Boring and a waste of valuable time. The characters are not very interesting yet the reader is subjected to consistent examination of their make up and personalities. The whole book just doesn't come across as intelligently constructed. I get the feeling that the authors are trying to overly impress the reader with their "intelligence" and the book seems to constantly fall short.

The epic continues.......2007-08-02

I have been eagerly awaiting the next in this wonderfull series and was not dissapointed. Whether a fan of European history, Alternative history, or adventure with a decidedly American flavor then look no further. While not as gripping as 1633 it did tie together many a thread from the last story and the many side stories from this universe. After the tears and a pain from the losses of the opening gambit of the war started in 1633 the often humerous or stalwart manuevers of the continuing fight endeared me further to the series. The series wont be for everyone but there is so much of a good thing here that it will appeal to most. In short I would recomend this and any of the books in this series to my friends and often do so.

Mostly disappointing addition to powerful series.......2007-07-29

A bit more than two years after the West Virginia town of Grantsville has been pulled into the middle of the 30 years war in what became Germany, the war wages on. The Americans quickly joined up with Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus against the Spanish and their allies, but France under Richelieu, always anxious to provide a counterweight, joined with Spain, England, and Denmark to offset the high-technology the Americans have brought. Meanwhile, French labs have begun to churn out their own technical advances--owing in part to Grantsville leader Mike Stearns's decision to let most information flow freely in his technological-deterministic certainty that modern technology will bring about democracy.

Fortunately for the increasingly united Germany being created by Gustavus Adolphus and Stearns, Their nation can tackle each of its opponents individually. In 1634: THE BALTIC WAR, the major requirements are to break the siege of the Baltic ports, free the Grantsville team being held in the Tower of London, and (mainly for the pleasure of the Swedish King) defeat Denmark so totally that it will agree to become part of a new pan-Scandinavian union.

Readers of David Weber's Honor Harrington series will recognize the familiar pattern of a technological advance by the goodguys (Grantsville or Manticore) being overwhelming despite an apparently offsetting advance made by the enemy (France or Haven). In this case, the overwhelming advance is Grantsville's navy. No contemporary navy, and no coastal fortifications can stand against either the new ironclads, equipped with ten inch guns or even the timberclad battleships. Unfortunately for the French, their breech-loading rifles enabled only a minor raid, eliminating an annoying up-time character.

The Flint and Weber books in this series seem to have taken an unfortunate direction, with more of the characters lecturing one another, and long contemplative passages where Flint and Weber bring the reader up to date on what's happening. In fact, there isn't a lot of action in this entire 700+ page novel. One can imagine Flint and Weber snickering over which Americanisms they'd have the different down-time characters use, but the entire novel could have used some major pruning--and a lot more concentration on what is happening and why we should care. Rescuing the captive ambassarors from the Tower of London is fine, but really, they were in no particular danger and the rescue provides only personal satisfaction to Stearns and some of the other Grantsville types. If Stearns had gone in with the intent to rescue Cromwell, to launch a more sophisticated version of the Glorious Revolution and take England/Scotland out of the war, this would have made sense and been interesting. As it was, who cares. I found the romance between twenty-year-old Eddie Cantrell and 15-year-old Anne Catherine unromantic and again, thought Stearns's and (in this case) Admiral Simpson's willingness to risk an outbreak of war in newly passified Denmark to preserve Eddie from the consequences of his decisions to be unbelievable. The romance between uptime lady in waiting, Caroline Ann Platzer and downtime Sergeant Thorsten Engler seemed to exist only to allow Princess Kristina to insist that Engler be named 'Count of Narnia.' (I imagined Flint and Weber giggling about this--maybe my sense of humor is just different).

The brief scenes with painter Pieter Paul Rubens and the Cardinal-Infante Don Fernando have a lot of potential. Here is a character who's looking to the future, prepared to deal with reality with relatively open eyes, and who may become a worthy opponent to Gustavus Adolphus and Stearns in the future. I had hoped that Prince Ulrick of Denmark and his inventor-friend Baldur Norddahl could play similar roles--perhaps becoming national resistance heroes, demonstrating that the capitulation of a king doesn't necessarily result in the defeat of a nation. Unfortunately, this lesson doesn't seem about to be learned.

One of my problems with this series is that Stearns stands in an ideal position to eliminate the Atlantic slave trade before it really begins. In 1634, slavery was still relatively new, cotton was not king, and a determined effort could have wiped it out. Stearns intends to do this--perhaps that will be the basis of a subsequent novel. For now, it's the ugly secret that no one dare name.

This 163X Series started powerfully with 1632--a time travel with a difference. Stearns and his allies were intent on preserving the democratic ideals of America and making them work, while simultaneously ending a war that convulsed all of Europe for thirty years, depopulated and decentralized Germany (creating hard feelings the Prussians would later exploit in their creation of the German Empire), and impoverishing Spain. The current novel in the series, 1634: THE BALTIC WAR, shows occasional flashes of the excellence that kicked off the series. Overall, though, I found it a disappointment. Much of the action didn't seem aimed at goals that matter to the reader or to the overall development of a democratic society. Characters spent too much time patting each other on the back and discussing things rather than doing things and showing why they deserved those pats. And the romances never really grabbed me at all.

Worth reading; Could have been better........2007-07-21

Baltic War is a grand adventure, with many well-tracked characters and plot twists. It answers a number of questions that we have been waiting on for years, and is filled with interesting developments. I learned a good deal of 17th century history in this book, and Flint really made it come alive in new ways. The book encouraged me to constantly look up Wikipedia entries to understand more of what was really happening at the time. And Flint is to be congratulated for really showing the Downtimers as smart and able to contribute something effective against the Uptimers from the future.

The maps could have been better and more detailed, for those of us who are not experts on 17th century European history. And the book starts off quite slow, as do a number of the 1632 series, and takes a while to get going. Indeed, the writing is rather disjointed, perhaps from being written by two different authors. I felt like there were moments of great writing, alternating with moments written by a beginning author.

I grew tired of nearly every character, whether they had direct contact with the Americans or not, using American colloquial phrases and making an explicit point that they were doing so, on every single phrase. Are there no colloquial phrases in other cultures and languages? Do we truly think that American colloquialisms would spread in 2 years all over the continent, into foreign languages, without modern communications technology? It's simply sloppy writing.

A bit of a surprise, and a nice addition, is the CD at the back of the book, *with every single previous book Flint's every written* on a CD that opens as web browser. I have no idea how he will continue to make money in doing this, but it's like buying one book and getting another 50, including all of the Ring of Fire series.

This is a good addition to the series. Better than some of the other recent ones. It would have been better if 1634: Cannon Law hadn't been out already for a year, and taking place after the events of Baltic War, revealing what had already happened and who had survived. Sometimes I get the impression that Flint is so eager to try out new publishing tricks (multiple authors, amateur web writing, later chronological books being published earlier) that he sacrifices writing quality. You should read this book. Enjoy the excitement of a European war fought before there was nation states, with ironclad ships and repeating rifles. But Flint & Weber can do better. The promise once offered in 1632 does not match what we have today. 3 stars for the writing, an extra one for the publishing idea of adding in 50 books for the price of one.

Running out of steam?.......2007-06-13

I loved the earlier books in the series, but in this one, the action slows down and the character development falters. I thought that it needed a good editing to tighten up the story.

Average customer rating:

Another chapter in the 1632 series but format is hard to read
don't buy this book......
Weakest of the Series
many stones do form an arch, singly none
Useful Addition to the 'Ring of Fire' Series by Eric Flint, et al

1634: The Ram Rebellion (Assiti Shards)
Eric Flint
Manufacturer: Baen
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Adventure | Science Fiction | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books

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Grantville Gazette II
1635: Cannon Law (Ring of Fire)
1634: The Baltic War
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ASIN: 1416520600

Book Description

The Thirty Years War continues to ravage 17th century Europe, but a new force is gathering power and influence: the Confederated Principalities of Europe, an alliance between Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, and the West Virginians from the 20th century led by Mike Stearns who were hurled centuries into the past by a mysterious cosmic accident. Inspired by the example of American freedom and justice, a movement in Franconia among the peasants, who have revolted several times even before the arrival from the future of the town of Grantville, an independent revolutionary movement has arisen, flying the banner of the head of a ram. The West Virginians fully approve of liberating the peasants from the nobility, but they are also aware of how revolutionary movements can lead to bloodbaths. And avoiding that deadly possibility will require all of their future knowledge and all their plain old American horse-trading diplomacy. . . .

Customer Reviews:

Another chapter in the 1632 series but format is hard to read.......2007-10-17

Thank goodness this book has maps with it! Well, this book continues the saga of Grantville, a West Virginia town suddenly transported into the midst of the Thirty Years War. In this book, the New U.S. has been given the German territory of Franconia to administer by King Gustavus Adolphus. This has the potential for a great story but the way it is written and assembled is disjointed. Still, if you have patience and you've liked what you've seen so far in this series it should be worth it to get all the way through.

don't buy this book.............2007-09-11

....unless you have nothing else to spend your money on. I am a great fan of the other books, especially 1633, but this one is a poorly, maybe even unethically, conceived project. Many of the "stories" contained in the book were written by non-professional writers, and it really shows. Apparently many of them are available on the web, which makes the decision to publish them in book form, without warning the purchaser, rather iffy, in my opinion. The theme that is supposed to hold everything together, "Brillo" and his use as a symbol for a new form of government, is just, well, lame. The songs are unbelievably tedious, and the idea is not ever presented coherently.

Pass on this one, save your money for 1634: The Baltic War.

Weakest of the Series.......2007-09-10

The Ram Rebellion is easily the very least of the otherwise great 1632 series. Flint, in the introduction, says that the book is not quite an anthology and not quite a co-written effort. That middle of the road approach hurts the book. For a series that is normally a political action series with a great deal of research behind it, this book feels like a massive collection of events and characters that might be important some day (say, in 1636 or so), but weren't interesting or important enough to warrant their own treatment.
(Spoilers)
Also, the idea of Brillo the Ram gets irritating and repetitive so fast that I found myself wishing that they'd just kill it already; if the damn sheep is tainting the gene pool, EAT THE SHEEP. Don't complain about it so much that you start a cultural icon! If the Brillo stories were actually interesting, it wouldn't have been so bad; but they were called funny by so many characters and were so uninteresting that it rubbed me the wrong way.
(End Spoilers)
Speaking of so many characters, there were a LOT of characters that were utterly unimportant. I'm sorry Mr. Flint, but you yourself acknowledged that writers typically write about Great Men. There is a good reason for this: the commoners are frequently boring. Important, yes. Interesting, no. After feeling cheated buying the hardcover edition, I decided not to look into the other anthologies of the series and stick to the main storyline.

many stones do form an arch, singly none.......2007-06-07

As many reviewers have noted, this book has a lot of characters, and none of them are the "main" characters of the 1632 world. It takes place off the beaten path. If you haven't been reading this series, then by all means go and read 1632 and 1633 first.

The book's lack of a single central plot and a small set of characters is very much the authors' point, though. This book is deliberately set against the "great man of history" approach. The idea isn't the usual plot in which a small number of characters seize control of events. Instead, events steamroll along in the interactions of many seemingly unrelated characters, each trying to figure out their own small part of the world.

In many ways this book comes closest to the spirit of the 1632 enterprise, which at its heart is about "ordinary" people shaping history with "ordinary" resources.

If you read it with that theme in mind, instead of by trying to see the one central plot that ties everything together, you'll probably enjoy the book.

If you don't enjoy somewhat chaotic stories with lots of completely unintended consequences, then by all means go far, far, far away from this series. There are plenty of excellent alternate histories in which a few incedible people drive events (S M Stirling probably writes the best of these, though John Birmingham is worth checking out). The 1632 series, on the other hand, is an experiment in chaotic history.

This philosophy does lead to a lot of books in the series that seem like "sidelines" compared to the main military histories that have big armies blowing each other to pieces at the command of kings and presidents and cardinals. But to the "ordinary" peasants of Franconia, all of that stuff is the sideline, and in many ways that's the point!

Useful Addition to the 'Ring of Fire' Series by Eric Flint, et al.......2007-04-07

The Book is a collection of stories in Four parts.

Part 1. Recipes for Revolution is set in 1631 and 1632. It's chiefly two stories about "Birdy" Newhouse, a farmer on the border of 'The Ring of Fire' who lost acreage in the transfer across time and wants to rent or buy extra land from the local German owners. This presents problems and opportunities which form the basis of the stories. There are also three short glimpses of Mike Stearns with Melissa Mailey.

Part 2. Enter the Ram introduces Flo Richards, a farmer's wife with four grown children who had bought a small flock of type C Delaine Merino sheep and some angora rabbits before the RoF in the hope that she'd see more of her youngest daughter once she'd finished her studies out of town. The RoF had left Jan, the daughter behind, and Flo was dealing with this loss by concentrating on her livestock. She, and JD, her husband have local Germans living with them as partners now that farming has become more labour intensive. Flo's laments about the poor quality wool of the locally obtained ram (who comes to be known as Brillo for that reason) stike a chord with some-one and before long a number of 'Brillo fables' appear in the local broadsheet.

Flo Richards has mixed feelings about Brillo. He has escaped from his pen and interfered with her merino breeding program, yet his fame due to the stories spread through Grantville out into the rest of Germany. The Women's League of Voters uses a Ram's Head as its emblem, schoolchildren sing songs about Brillo and Elizabeth "Bitty" Matowski, introduces Ballet to the down-timers with a Brillo ballet.

Part 3. The Trouble in Franconia begins in December 1632 with the King of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus having assigned the administration of those parts of Franconia that were Catholic to the New United States (NUS). They don't have the manpower to occupy the province and there are actually pockets of resistance in at least two fortresses that the Swedish King simply bypassed in his conquest. These, and other things have to be dealt with by a mixture of up-timers and down-timers. All this sets the scene for the longest story in the book.

Part 4. The Ram Rebellion. In Franconia, a schoolteacher has been reading "Common Sense" by Tom Paine. He also finds the Brillo stories interesting. The farmers in Franconia (and Thuringia for that matter) have a history of dissent concerning serfdom and Mike Stearns has hopes of getting some fundamental changes made in the way that Franconia is run as a result of a farmer's rebellion of sorts. He neglects to include this in the briefing given to the civil servants sent down to administer Franconia although Johnny F. and Noelle Murphy, among others have an effect on the schoolteacher's "Ram rebellion".

I think that this book gives useful background about developments outside of the main geo-political story where the greater history of Europe is taking place. Franconia is a local area where things are happenning to local people. I've only given it three stars because although it is entertaining and fleshes out the story-line I think it is an optional addition to the main story of Grantville in the Thirty Years War.

Anyone who gets into the series to the extent of The Grantville Gazette and Baen's Bar in the internet will probably find this book a useful addition to their entertainment.

The Thirty Years War (New York Review Books Classics)

Average customer rating:

One of the great books of the 20th century
A Panoramic and Poltically Sophisticated History
Machiavellian machinations
Outstanding
A Clear Presentation of a Tragic Historical Era

The Thirty Years War (New York Review Books Classics)
C. V. Wedgwood
Manufacturer: NYRB Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Europe | History | Subjects | Books

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17th Century | World | History | Subjects | Books
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The Thirty Years' War 1618-1648
The Reformation

ASIN: 1590171462
Release Date: 2005-06-30

Book Description

Europe in 1618 was riven between Protestants and Catholics, Bourbon and Hapsburg--as well as empires, kingdoms, and countless principalities. After angry Protestants tossed three representatives of the Holy Roman Empire out the window of the royal castle in Prague, world war spread from Bohemia with relentless abandon, drawing powers from Spain to Sweden into a nightmarish world of famine, disease, and seemingly unstoppable destruction.

Customer Reviews:

One of the great books of the 20th century.......2007-06-26

I have had this book high on my reading list for over 40 years now, ever since a took a course in German Baroque literature as an undergraduate. It is far better than I had imagined, both in style and content. My only regret is that I didn't get around to reading it 40 years ago.

A Panoramic and Poltically Sophisticated History.......2007-04-20

For the English-language reader Wedgwood's book, which has been in print for over sixty years, is still an excellent introduction and synoptic narrative of this lengthy and turbulent period of European history. It gives brief and judicious biographical sketches of the major political and military actors of three generations: The principal antagonists at the outset -- Ferdinand II of Austria and Frederick V, Elector Palatine; the condottieri-style generals - Spinola, von Mansfeld, Tilly, Wallenstein, Piccolomini, Christian of Halberstadt, Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar, the duc d'Enghien (Conde); the contentious minor rulers -- Maximilian V of Bavaria, Johann Georg of Saxony; the northern monarchs -- Christian IV of Denmark and Gustavus Adophus of Sweden (and his daughter Christina and prime minister, Oxenstierna); the "spoiler", Cardinal Richelieu; the new Emperor Ferdinand III and his cousin, the warlord Cardinal-Infant Ferdinand of Spain; and many others. This book is written in a traditional English historian's prose style that is clear, eloquent and totally lacking the jargon of concurrent and later social and economic histories, while still covering these aspects of the period. In spite of some reviewers' claims of a "Protestant bias" in her interpretation, the author seems extremely fair when assessing responsibility for the long-running disaster of the war, taking the position that it was the self-serving political interests of the participants (dynasties, rulers, generals and paymasters) that kept the war going at the expense of the social and economic welfare of the vast majority of inhabitants of Germany and Bohemia.

Although I am not familiar with this new edition (and Grafton's introduction) I emphasize that any reissuing of this book should have a brief scholarly introduction which supplies more details on the constitutional arrangements and crises of the Holy Roman Empire during the sixteenth century, with a special emphasis on the composition of the Bohemian estates and the conflicts between the estates and the Habsburg king-emperors. The extent and internal organization of "the Bohemian crown lands" should also be outlined. A succinct review of the political status of Lutheranism, Calvinism, the Bohemian Brethren, and other Protestant confessions throughout all of Europe around the year 1600 and a note on how their status had altered by 1700 would also be useful in "setting the stage" for the events of 1618 and understanding the relgious-denomination consequences of the war.

The author supplies sufficient details on the major battles, but this is not a work of military history. As Wedgwood knows, battles were only significant in the larger view as a result of their political consequences. And it is in the elucidation of the underlying politics of the war (including how political prospects shifted with the waxing and waning of military fortunes) that Wedgwood excels. In her analysis of the general European situation at the outset of the war she proposes that there were three sets of forces which underlay and drove contemporary events. Each was a source of conflict and each might cross-cut the others, complicating the declared interests and objectives of the dynasties and nations involved. In brief, the forces were: (a) Religion, with three major competing factions (Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist; she notes that the conflict between the latter two forms of Protestantism was often as extreme as it was between each of them and the Roman Catholic Church). (b) Nationalism (French, German, Czech, etc.), which was a new force on the scene, crystallizing the idea that political entities might be defined by nationality (which here equals some combination of ethnicity and native language) rather than conceived of as polyglot territorial agglomerations brought about by dynastic interests. (c) Monarchic-constitutional issues, which were especially complicated and ambiguous within the "constitutional" grouping of major and minor powers known as The Holy Roman Empire (HRE).

The constitutional problem was twofold. Within the small arenas of developing nation states and the yet smaller ones of traditional rulerships throughout Europe (duchies, counties, "free-city" areas ruled by town councils and mayors) contests over the basis and extent of the rulers' powers and privileges were taking place. Aristocrats, oligarchs and merchants had traditional corporate bodies (estates) reluctant to cede their own powers (taxation, the organization of military service) to a central authority. The same conflict was also being played out on the larger scale of the Hly Roman Epire, that loose grouping of special obligations and exemptions which was the final residue of an earlier system of vassalage binding together the elected Emperor (who had been a Habsburg for several centuries) and the smaller rulerships of Central Europe. The religious reforms, rebellions and wars of the sixteenth century had produced a system that appeared to resolve some of the potential problems through the won privilege of cujus regio, eius religio ("whoever rules, his religion [is the religion of the ruled area]"). In the year of the war's inception, 1618, this new balance was very fragile, comprising four Catholic and three Protestant imperial Electors. In Germany the special arrangements regulating relationships between the Emperor (resident in Vienna or Prague) and local rulers and guaranteeing a great deal of political autonomy to the locals, especially the Protestant Electors, had been somewhat codified by the Augsburg Treaty of 1555, and were known as the "German Liberties". These would prove to be especially important to the three Protestant Electors at the outset of the war.

In the developing continental war one could be pro- or anti-Habsburg based on any one of the above factors or any combination of two or three of them. For example, a Catholic ruler (including the papacy) might seek Protestant allies in order to combat Habsburg territorial expansion in his direction or to combat constitutional changes in the Empire which affected his position adversely. Or a Protestant power might accept the Habsburg "program" in any given case because it did not wish to disturb constitutional arrangements that were to its advantage (this characterization is apt for Saxony and Brandenburg during the first twelve years of the war.)

As Wedgwood notes, all three considerations (religion, nationality, constitutional relations) could be and were used cynically to advance the positions and interests of individual rulers and factions. From the point of view of rationality or predictability, political choices and commitments were often self-contradictory (e.g., a Catholic power supporting a Protestant venture; a German Liberties party accepting occupation by the army of a foreign power, etc.) or temporary expedients that made the overall European situation more chaotic. The war began locally in Bohemia, but its complications and consequences radiated outward as far west as Spain and England (even farther, to the Caribbean naval theater), as far north as Sweden and northeast to Poland, as far south as Italy and southeast as Transylvania; in other words, it was a European continental war with global impact.

When the war broke out in 1618 it was over the Habsburg violation of a "constitutional guarantee" of religious freedom in Bohemia (the concessions stated in Rudolf II's Letter of Majesty). And here is where individual personalities and beliefs played an important role. Ferdinand II, who had knowingly violated the terms of the Letter soon after being selected by the Bohemian Diet as King (and therefore the first in precedence of the HRE Electors) was determined not only to expand the political powers of the Habsburg dynasty in Bohemia and elsewhere, he was firmly committed to the goals of the Catholic Counter-Reformation (i.e., re-Catholicizing all of the areas within the HRE which had become Protestant during the last one hundred years). When he was deposed by a special convention of the Bohemian estates (the defenestration of his deputies in Prague being the signal event of this deposition), the crown of Bohemia was offered to the Elector of the (Rhineland) Palatinate, Frederick V, who considered himself a champion of the Protestant cause. The religious zeal of these two antagonists led to extreme fixed positions at the very outset of the war.

Given the other major conflict hovering in the background -- the Spanish Habsburg determination to recover the now Protestant area of the Netherlands which had become the successful and defiant (Dutch) United Provinces - the war soon became international. While the entry of France and then Denmark followed by Sweden, into the war during the 1620's changed its nature and extended its duration, Wedgwood concentrates much of her analysis on the behavior of the two Protestant Electors, Johann Georg of Saxony and Georg Wilhelm of Brandenburg and one Catholic ruler, Maximilian of Bavaria. It is her contention throughout the book that Johann Georg and Maximilian in particular could have prevented the war's spread and forced Ferdinand into a compromise very early in the course of events that acquired their own dynamism once they got out of hand. Despite their religious differences these two were always strong "German Liberties" proponents, and each had the same view of the Austrian Habsburg rulers: they should be kept for the broader protections they offered, but kept in place with respect to encroachments on the traditional rights of local rulers. In the end both of these rulers survived the lengthy war in spite of numerous diplomatic and military reversals (Saxony switched sides and joined the Swedes for several years, while Maximilian's position was constantly and secretly supported by his nominal enemies, the French, as their potential foot in the Habsburg camp.) Wedgwood believes that the price of their survival was far too costly for the rest of Germany.

Wedgwood's gloss on the changing nature of the conflict is that by the year 1635 the war had become one of great-power politics, and that the earlier religious and ideological causes were losing their ability to motivate the antagonists. Her summary of the changes emphasizes the following:

(a) Religion had discredited itself as a plausible source of political programs and a legitimate cause for war. Religion was becoming more interiorized and private, and losing ground philosophically and ethically to the new prestige of empirical and applied science (this was the era of Galileo and Kepler, with Descartes, Harvey, Hook, Newton, Huygens, etc. on the near horizon; a time of laboratory science and scientific societies.) As the basis of a political program religion was viewed cynically by those who saw the devastation it had brought about.

(b) For thinking men, nationalism began to fill the emotional void in public life left by the withdrawal of religion as the underlying motive for political and cultural action. This was very obvious in France, but even true of Ferdinand III, for whom the new main cause was the construction of an Austrian-based hereditary monarchy whose additional obligations as the Holy Roman Imperial protector of far-flung German Catholics were no longer perceived as worthwhile. In the minds of both Germans and Austrian Habsburgs the Holy Roman Empire was becoming an honorific entity with ambiguous and weak political commitments in Germany. The Elbe-North German-Pomeranian ideal empire of Wallenstein was never again revived as a dynastic program. Austria began to move south and east (toward Italy, Croatia, and Hungary) in its expansionist aims.

(c) The control of immense polyglot, multi-religious, mercenary armies and their huge camp followings had become a pressing matter of concern for all of the political authorities that hired them - they were neither religious nor national in their motives and aims and were in fact independent "mobile states" unto themselves, cynical and rapacious and often as dangerous to their paymasters as to their foes; whenever their immediate prospects for pay and maintenance looked bad, they changed sides. The most successful mercenary generals had become mini-sovereigns. Officers were all "out for themselves" and for their troops (rather than for the cause or nation of their paymaster), since without troop loyalty they had no means of personal advancement -- the most famous commanders, Ernst von Mansfeld, Wallenstein, Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar, the Swedish general Wrangel, all expected (and some received) grants of territory and titles of nobility as their rewards for service. The "national" armies of conscripts that came to the fore in the 18th century was the answer to this problem.

The pace of the war wound down during its last five years (although there were several major battles fought even then), which was a period of extended negotiatons in Münster and Osnabrück, with the "final treaty" being signed late in 1648. For the next five years a series of conferences met at Nürnberg to implement and enforce the peace treaty and to deal with difficult problems raised by demobilizing huge armies. Many of the loans of this period, which were raised to cover the demobilization costs, were not paid off for a century. Individual rulers such as Charles of Lorraine and the Duke of Savoy (who got nothing from the treaty) refused to vacate various fortresses for five or six years, but the war did not break out again. France and Spain continued at war with each other, but not in Germany. Numerous soldiers, especially officers, went into mercenary service all over Europe. Others took to the hills as professional bandits - for the next 20 years merchants traveled through certain parts of Germany and Bohemia in armed caravans.

Wedgwood accepts the more recent (1900-1930's) historical estimate that the population of the Imperial German lands (excluding Alsace and the Netherlands) dropped from about 21 million in 1618 to 13 million in 1648. The number of dislocated people was also substantial. While she acknowledges that the number of towns and villages destroyed and other "infrastructural" and economic losses were very large, she feels that all contemporary sources (e.g., the pamphlet literature of the next 100 years) exaggerated local losses, since all parties in the war continued to seek indemnities and restitution. The free peasantry benefited briefly, since landowners were desperate for manpower to restore their estates - prices fell while wages rose for a number of years, which increased the standard of living of peasants and artisans. But within a decade of the peace treaty the landowning gentry was pleading with Imperial, royal and local rulers to impose legal restrictions which would re-create bonded, serf-like conditions for peasants. Town councils now became pawns and bureaucrats of the dynastic courts of their rulers and also implemented restrictive legislations on peasants (e.g., prohibitions against mobility, domestic industry, and household craft production -- a trend which later historians refer to as "neo-serfdom"). Class stratification was as rigid as it was before the war started. There was a new, large class of mobile petty nobles and gentry seeking court-backed military and bureaucratic appointments, at the expense of town and peasant taxpayers.

Germany and the Austrian-based monarchy and empire were totally excluded from the international competition to establish overseas colonies and from the developing "Atlantic trade". For a number of years the outlets of Germany's major rivers (Rhine, Elbe, Oder, and for Brandenburg-Prussia, Vistula) were controlled by foreign powers, reducing Germany's commercial strength. Hamburg was the exception, becoming the major maritime merchant city of the North Sea coast, at the expense of the other Hanseatic cities and the Scandinavian powers. The only medium-sized German state to emerge with positive prospects was Brandenburg, soon to become the administratively efficient and militarily powerful Prussia. The peace, while ending the "wars of religion", set the stage for a long series of "nationalistic" wars that subsumed dynastic and religious sources of conflict. France replaced the Habsburg Spanish-Austrian coalition as the menacing and tyrannical continental power willing to disturb the peace. Austria turned to the south and east and Spain lost its great power status and became an economic and cultural backwater. There was no politically or culturally unified Germany within the boundaries of the old Empire (French culture began to reign supreme) and the cosmopolitanism (its openness to outside influences) of this area during the 18th century, instead of being a source of pride over its achievements, became a source of lament for later cultural and ethnic purists of revived German nationalism.

Author's Judgment and Conclusions: In terms of responsibility for the overall disaster, Wedgwood points to the futility and self-destructiveness of sincere religious zeal in the cases of Ferdinand II and the Elector Palatine. But, from the point of view of failures of practical (and ethical) politics, she highlights the behavior of Maximilian and Johann Georg, who could have prevented the spread of the conflict in 1620 and could have brought the war to an early end in 1635 if they had agreed to work together on a "unified German program" which would have forced Imperial compromises and concessions had they both stood behind it. Between these two she sees the Saxon as the greater victim of military circumstances (pressed by the Swedish juggernaut) and therefore less culpable for the mess, while she judges the Bavarian as too subtle and too ambitious in pursuit of his own dynastic and territorial ambitions at the expense of a general settlement good for his fellow Germans, thus identifying him as the more culpable.

Beautiful in its style and concision, Wedgwood's final summary is also gloomy (as one might expect of a work completed in 1939, on the verge of World War II):

"As there was no compulsion towards a conflict which, in despite of the apparent bitterness of the parties, took so long to engage and needed so much assiduous blowing to fan the flame, so no right was vindicated by its ragged end. The war solved no problem. Its effects, both immediate and indirect, were either negative or disastrous. Morally subversive, economically destructive, socially degrading, confused in its causes, devious in its course, futile in its result, it is the outstanding example in European history of meaningless conflict."

Machiavellian machinations.......2007-04-09

This is the best single-volume account of the Thirty Years War
(1618-1648). The war was very complex but Wedgwood provides singular
clarity. Other interpretations are possible, but her vision is strong
and memorable. The Machiavellian machinations are head-spinning, one has
to read carefully, the reward is a solid understanding of not only
17th C dynastic politics but how Medieval politics operated
before the rise of the nation state.

Wedgwood is an old-fashioned historian like Gibbon, retelling the events
in highly-readable prose, focused on the "great men". This can be
problematic, the Thirty Years War was more than just the decisions made
by a few elites - social, economic and other forces were at work. Her
sources are almost all 19th century. There are no new insights on the
war, it is a retelling of established views. As a political narrative it
is not only a great work of history but also literature.

Outstanding.......2007-02-22

Among the very best histories I have ever read. At the end you can actually make sense (???) of the 30 Years War

A Clear Presentation of a Tragic Historical Era.......2006-12-09

C.V. Wedgewood wrote a good historical account of a complex historical episode. Her book, titled THE THIRTY YEARS WAR, is a "classic", and those who are interested in the Thirty Years War or diplomatic history will benefit from this book. In other words, the book is "timeless."

Miss Wedgewood begins THE THIRTY YEARS WAR with a careful account of Germany during and immediately after the Reformation. This historical phase is important if readers are to understand the complexities of the Thirty years War. Of particular note is the Peace of Augsburg which the Germans agreed to in 1555. Miss Wedgewood's assesssment of these prior events is crucial to comprehending her book as well as the Thirty Years War(1618-1648). Readers should be aware the the Germans were not politically united, and historians could easily refer to Germany as the Germanies. Miss Wedgewood emphasizes this point very effectively.

Miss Wedgewood examines the political and religious status of the Germans in the early 17th. century(early 1600s). The religious and political tensions were serious, and the religious divisions between the Catholics and various Protestant sects, especially the Lutherans and Calvinists, were dangerous to say the least. Miss Wedgewood clearly informs the readers "who the players were."

The above mentioned tensions are important to further understand why "The Definistration of Prague", which occured in 1618, was such a serious diplomatic incident. The "incident" was the reason for the beginning of the Thirty Years War. In other words, this was the spark for a European and especially a German tragedy.

Readers may know that the Thrity Years War gradually began as a series of conflicts which could have ended the eventual destructive nature of this war. For example, The Happsburgs, the German Cattholics, defeated the Czech Protestants at the Battle of White Mountain in 1620 which could have ended the conflict. However, the German Lutherans joined the war in 1625 only to be defeated. The Danes entered the war in 1629, and they were also defeated. The tragedy that had been incubating exploded.

In 1631, the Swedes under their king, Gustavus Adolphus (1611-1632) joined the war with devestating consequences. Gustavus Adolphus was the one true religious zealot, and his religious enthusiasm only made the bloodshed far worse. He lost his life in 1632, and the Swedes lost their ruler.

Some readers may be perplexed that the French under the leadership of Louis XIII (1610)-1643)and Cardinal Richleau (1585-1642) ended the Thirdy Wars Year on the "Protestant" side. The French saw this war as a dynastic war, and their fears of powerful Hapsburgs in their eastern and southern borders (German and Spain) posed a diplomatic threat. In other words, Louis XIII and Cardinal Richleau did not see the war as religious conflict. Miss Wedgewood handles these diplomatic complexities very well. One should not that the Catholic French financed the Swedish intervention until the French declared war on the Hapsburgs in 1635.

Miss Wedgewood treats events after 1635 very well. The war was a stalemate which caused disaster for the Germans. Neither side could pay their mercenary troops who vented their frustrations on innocent civilians commiting rape, looting, mass murder, etc. This in turn resulted in the destruction of agriculture which caused considerable famine. Miss Wedgewood's detailed examination clearly reveals the excesses of all this tragedy which could not prevented until both sides exhausted themselves.

The fact that the French used this war to exhuast their Hapsburg rivals is clear for any who reads this book. The fact that the war ended as a "quitters' peace" is also made clear. Miss Wedgewood makes a good case that the end of the Thirty Years War and Peace of Westphalia may have saved European Civilization. One should note that Peace of Westphalia (1648) was actually a series of treaties of the parties involved.

With some exceptions, the Thirty Years War was the last modern war in which the Europeans fought each other and thereafter tried to avoid civilian casualties. There were exceptions of course, and the fact is ironic that this book was published just before World War II erupted in 1939.

Miss Wedgewood's THE THIRTY YEARS WAR is not dated. Her thesis regarding this tragic war could be applied to most total wars. The fact that the 20th century was history's bloodiest century so far makes this book quite relevant. Her prose makes this book readable and useful. She has done detailed research, and her writing style clarifies a complex era. Her book should be on every serious history student's reading list.

1634: The Bavarian Crisis (The Ring of Fire)

Average customer rating:

A Very Enjoyable Addition to the Saga
Slow start but strong finish
Way too much information gets in the way of enjoyment
YAWN !!!!!
Complicated fun

1634: The Bavarian Crisis (The Ring of Fire)
Eric Flint , and Virginia DeMarce
Manufacturer: Baen
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1416542531

Book Description

The CPE has the know-how of 20th century technology, but needs iron and steel to make the machines. The iron mines of the upper Palatinate were rendered inoperable by wartime damage, and American know-how is needed on the spot to pump them out and get the metal flowing again-a mission that will prove more complicated than anyone expects. In the maelstrom that is Europe, even a 20th century copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica can precipitate a crisis, when readers learn of the 1640 Portuguese revolt, a crisis that will involve Naples as well. Another factor: Albanian exiles in Naples, inspired by the Americans, are plotting to recover lost Albanian turf, which will precipitate yet another crisis in the Balkans.

This troubled century was full of revolutions and plans for more revolutions before the Americans arrived, and gave every would-be revolutionary an example of a revolution that succeeded. Europe is a pot coming to a boil, and Mike Stearns will have his hands full seeing that it doesn't boil over on to Grantville and the CPE.

Customer Reviews:

A Very Enjoyable Addition to the Saga.......2007-10-16

The latest in the "1632" saga; I found it extremely enjoyable and well written. New readers should certainly read at least "1632" and perhaps others of the earlier books in the series before reading this one, but for the "constant reader," this is a very welcome addition.

Slow start but strong finish.......2007-10-06

The first 1/3rd of the book is a little tough to read at times. Too scholastic. Once things started moving it felt more like a 1632 novel with action interspersed with detailed political/economic info. I would reccommend in future novels a preface with a dramatis personae listing. This would have kicked the pacing up early. I didn't see the list at the back until I had finished - for all the good it did me then.

I really liked the second half of the book, it just took me too long to get there.

Way too much information gets in the way of enjoyment.......2007-10-05

This is the continuing saga in the 1632 Universe that was started (not surprisingly) with a book entitled 1632.

Now it is 1634 and there is a Crisis in Bavaria (hence, the current title).

If you aren't familiar with this series, it has a number of unusual characteristics. Quite notably, there are now about four books that take place in 1634. And there is a book that takes place in 1635. To keep fans on their toes, that book came out BEFORE the last two books that take place in 1634.

Confused?

The reason is that Eric Flint has delegated the writing of these latest books to other authors. Or perhaps he is collaborating with them. It is a little hard to tell.

Anyhow, the latest book is entertaining but is seriously flawed in that it requires a scorecard to keep all of the characters and political situations in the right order.

Quick history lesson for you: in the 17th Century, Germany was a crazy quilt of kingdoms, principalities, duchies,etc.

This book is about the political intrigue that is taking place among this crazy quilt of political entities.

The sheer mass of characters that are introduced in this book is staggering. Aside from the royalty, there are the servants, the soldiers, the diplomats, etc.

It doesn't help that many of the places have similar names. Nurnburg is not the same as Neuburg. (But they aren't too far away.) Amburg is different from Hamburg and Bamburg.

And just when you think that you are getting on top of things, the authors throw in an aside explaining the role of guild membership in Basel, Switzerland. Mind you, that never actually gets used for anything, but there is this explanation.

Frankly, it seemed that the authors would find something interesting in their research and then would go out of their way to weave it in.

The main plot revolves around a group of people moving across the countryside getting chased by bad guys. And then they get to safety. And then they leave the safety and get chased by bad guys again. It gets quite tiresome.

On the positive side, I feel like I learned something by reading this book, because I have a better feel for the intricacies of the relationship of the Holy Roman Empire (aka Austria/Hungary) with its immediate neighbors.

The writing is crisp and clear. The prose is not overly busy and most of the main characters in the book were interesting.

I just wish that I hadn't had to have my head spin as much as it did when I tried to follow the plot.

YAWN !!!!!.......2007-10-03

What a let down. Jeepers, could this book be any more boring???
I doubt it.

Complicated fun.......2007-10-02

The Bavarian Crisis is a fun read, but, like the RAM Rebellion, a complicated one. The authors and publisher need to proofread more carefully. In the text words were omitted or the wrong words used. As a retired academic, that sort of thing bothers me.

Average customer rating:

The standard text
Superior Survey of a Challenging Subject
Stultifyingly Dull
An excellent place to start
An excellent resource

The Thirty Years' War
G. Parker
Manufacturer: Routledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0415128838

Book Description

The first edition of The Thirty Years' War
offered an unrivalled survey of a central period in European history. Drawing on a huge body of source material from different languages and countries throughout Europe, it provided a clear and comprehensive narrative and analytical account of the subject. It has established itself as the classic text with reviewers, students and the general reader. This second edition has been thoroughly revised to include the very latest research. The updated bibliographical information provides an invaluable resource, synthesising the major work in the field, in all languages, up to 1996. The book covers the horrors of the war and the contorted politics of the period. It deals with all the major figures, including Wallerstein and Richelieu, Gustavus Adolphus and Tilly, the Winter King and the Habsburg emperors. For range and depth of coverage there is no other work like it. It has become the definitive book on the subject. Contributors: Simon Adams, Gerhard Benecke, Richard Bonney, John H. Elliott, R.J.W. Evans, Christopher R. Friedrichs, Bodo Nischan, Geoffrey Parker, E. Ladewig Petersen, Michael Roberts.

Customer Reviews:

The standard text.......2007-03-17

For modern students of international relations, the Thirty Years' War is something like a great book, such as "Democracy in America" or "The Education of Henry Adams": it is often referenced and quoted but rarely examined in toto nor ever fully understood. For many years, the topic of the Thirty Years' War remained on my "to do" reading list. But it was the emerging Sunni-Shia divide in the Middle East that finally prompted me to pick up this book, hoping to get a fuller picture and appreciation of how Christians dealt with their internal doctrinal differences nearly half-a-millennium ago.

On one level, this book was a let down. I have read a number of other works by Geoffrey Parker and have come to respect and admire his ability to blend the best attributes of the Academy with the self-assured and highly readable style of the popular historian. Perhaps I should have paid greater heed to his role as editor and not author of this comprehensive history of a conflict that has become synonymous with rape, pillage, and plunder. I was expecting an eye-popping tour de force; what I got was a rather stale political-military history of the 17th century. I have no doubt that this volume is as good as it gets. I've read other introductory works and the classic by C.V. Wedgewood, and they are no more engaging than this. Whereas Parker made Philip II and the affairs of 16th century Spain come to life in "The Grand Strategy of Philip II" the major actors of the Thirty Years' War, who were ever bit as compelling as Philip, unfortunately come across as bland and uninspiring. Gustavus Adolphus, Tilly, Richeleau, Wallenstein, Oxenstierna and others remain mere names on a page rather than the larger-than-life characters they really were and their contemporaries saw them as.

Nevertheless, this overview is still the best that is available to the lay reader or undergraduate student and has many redeeming qualities, not least of which are a great number of helpful maps and graphs that make some sense of the bewildering array of states that enter and exit and re-enter the conflict over the course of decades.

Also, I was struck by the portrayal of Sweden and the role of the military revolution in the outcome of the conflict. Parker is one of the leading historians (and proponents) of the argument that tactical and doctrinal changes in land warfare during the early part of the 17th century led to a discontinuous change in the conduct of military operations and ultimately propelled the West to global imperial domination. Yet, the so-called military revolution gets little attention here and the specifically military history of the entire conflict is rather muted. A couple of things are clear, however. First, the victories of Gustavus Adolphus and the Swedish armies were, indeed, stunning. Not only had the Protestants finally found an answer to Tilly and the Catholic armies, which had been undefeated over more than a decade, but they nearly annihilated the Catholics at Breitenfield in 1631. The heavy use of musketeers in shallow ranks, supported by mobile field artillery and shock cavalry tactics were as decisive tactically as the German blitzkrieg three centuries later. Second, just as the Germans achieved breathtaking battlefield victories with their panzer units but were unable to achieve strategic victory, so too did the Swedes find that winning a battle, however decisively, is not the same as winning a war.

Parker also ascribes interesting political motives to the Swedes. He writes that both Gustavus Adolphus and Oxensteirna were driven primarily to defend Swedish control of the Baltic Sea, which was threatened in the late 1620s as Tilly and Wallenstein marched northward. The authors suggest that defending the Protestant faith in Germany, especially after the promulgation of the Edict of Restitution, played only a minor role in driving Swedish policy and actions. Moreover, as the war grinded on, the Swedes decided to pursue a policy of "Germanification" of the war, much like the US tried in Vietnam and, one can easily surmise, eventually in Iraq. That is, the Swedes grew tired of expending so much blood and treasure in a conflict that they did not see as their own and whose outcome could only be determined by Germans.

Finally, Parker and company dismiss the notion that the Thirty Years' War was the economic and demographic castrophe that it has often been portrayed as. Indeed, the war is often synonymous with apocalyptic religious conflict. Here the authors surmise that the German population fell by maybe 15% during the war, not the 50% figure often tossed about. And they argue that the barbarity that did occur was the result of widespread starvation and the fact that the country was teeming with unpaid, hungry troops, both Catholic and Protestant. So, according to the authors, it was hunger and not religious hatred that fueled whatever atrocities that did occur.

In sum, this is likely as solid and readable an overview of the war that one is likely to find, although it cannot be recommended broadly as it is a tough, dry read.

Superior Survey of a Challenging Subject.......2005-12-07

It is hard to grasp how difficult it is to produce a sound single-volume study of the Thirty Years' War. This continent-wide conflagration engulfed most European states, compelled the resolution of many of the era's crucial issues, and actually extended beyond the conventional time frame of 1618-48. Writing a book of manageable size thus requires choices, and Geoffrey Parker's are eminently reasonable. He concentrates on the international political and diplomatic aspects, while including more than enough on religion, economy, the impact of war on society, and other "background" concerns. Readers looking here for full-blown accounts of military ops may be chagrined, but this is not the goal of Parker (who wrote most of the text) and his colleagues. They provide perfectly adequate data on battles and campaigns, deftly locating military affairs within a fully comprehensible framework highlighting great-power rivalry and doctrinal conflict. The prose is consistently readable, another neat achievement in a multiauthored work, and the many illustrations and maps are a definite plus. For more on actual combat, C.V. Wedgwood's standard "Thirty Years' War" is still a fine description, though much less analytical than Parker's contribution. G. Mortimer, "Eyewitness Accounts of the Thirty Years' War" is recent scholarship (with extensive quotes from primary sources) adding nuance to the older view that the TYW was an unmitigated disaster throughout Germany.

Stultifyingly Dull.......2004-06-04

The Thirty Years War is an area of study I really want to know more about. It is complex, and the political interactions of most of the nations of Europe make it a huge task to explain.

This book lacks. I'm sure the facts are complete and accurate, but the writing is as dry as week old toast. None of the personae came alive, and none of the facts were made memorable. I would recommend it as a reference, perhaps, but not as an interesting read on the subject. It sits on my shelf while I seek better written works to capture my interest.

An excellent place to start.......2003-11-23

The Thirty Years' War was a very confusing conflict on many levels, and to attempt any account of it in barely 200 pages is almost foolhardy. But this book succeeds, at least in setting the stage and following the people and politics. It is a good place to start a study of the conflict. It is not a military history (there is a brief account of some specifically military aspects toward the end) nor a social history, and a great deal of detail had to be left out. But the basics of the war are there, which can be fleshed out with more extensive or specialist works.

An excellent resource.......2002-08-25

Geoffrey Parker is excellent as usual, providing in-depth insight and an engaging style. Novices to the topic might also wish to consult his "Europe in Crisis" or "Dutch Revolt" texts. It's difficult to find a good and unbiased investigation into the Catholic/Habsburg side elsewhere. The "one star" review is a gross misjudgement - it goes without saying that a book of this type may be too complex for someone with no experience at all with the seventeenth century, but a history can't spend all of its time on explanatory hand-holding. As for stylistic criticism, it's difficult to find history as good as Parker's written as well, let alone better.

Book Description

Grantville, formerly in West Virginia in the 20th century, now in Germany in the 17th century, is the most unusual town in the world-and probably in any century. The mysterious cosmic phenomena which the former West Virginians call the "Ring of Fire" hurled the town back through time into the middle of the Thirty Years War. In spite of their advanced technology, the men and women of Grantville are greatly outnumbered and must deal carefully with the squabbling local tyrants-but they have no shortage of American courage and ingenuity. Eric Flint, a bright new star of science fiction and creator of the Ring of Fire universe, now presents a book of new fiction about the heroes of Grantville, as well as articles examining the problems of maintaining 20th century technology in the 17th century. (Can you make penicillin from bread mold? To conserve your limited supply of gasoline, can you use literal horsepower to run a dynamo? Can you make a radio using 17th century glassware and metallurgy?) The Grantville Gazette is a fascinating exercise in alternate history and imagination and will be a must-buy for everyone who read 1632 and 1633.

Customer Reviews:

Good but reeks of US propaganda.......2006-11-06

Great story but the constant super American hillbillies is very draining if you don't live in the fantasy world which is the current USA.

All the news that fits in print?.......2006-10-18

This is the earliest of the Grantville Gazette sub-series (= I). You have no reason to read it before Eric Flint's original novel, "1632" (the year), that opens the whole mega-series. Actually, the Grantville Gazette is not a mock up of a fictional 17th century newspaper. Rather, it is an anthology of fiction and fact, like the old Analog SF magazine, that complements the world of "1632," the pathbreaking novel by Eric Flint that follows the arduous development of a West Virginian town that inexplicably finds itself alone in 17th century Germany, caught in the miserable Thirty Year War. This single episode of time travel is the only SF in the series, and so far remains unexplained, indeed unexamined. The series stemming from "1632" is rather an extremely ambitious example of Alternate History, or "What if..." (although its authors appear to come from SF, Speculative Fiction). The writing level is suitable for intelligent teenagers. Everyone has to wade through the historical background paragraphs and "speeches" that are essential because of the unfamiliarity to most of us of the remote period.

This book is the first in a series of occasional short story/article collections that mainly derive from authors drawn into an online community fascinated by the exploration of suddenly-17th century Americans abroad, as initiated by Flint. This is a remarkably constructed series, comprising short stories as well as novels, all directly contributing IN TO the main story line: how modern Americans might adapt to dangerously primitive Europe. The Gazette stories are not sequels, throw-aways, or spin-offs. Therefore, these gazettes are almost as important to understanding the overall story as the big novels (where one chiefly finds the famous events and real people, like politician Cardinal Richelieu and king-general Gustavus Adolphus). It is promised, for example, that a group of teenage capitalist inventors in one of the stories here will appear again in a more important role.

The three "factual" articles on modern technologies applied to the 17th century are something new and informative. Articles by different authors on the immense obstacles to effective radio, and why you don't "just make up some more penicillin" are terrific backgrounds to understanding the objective conditions the Grantville time-travelers encountered. The article on "Horse Power" describes the main types of horse breeds, but includes a list of antique horse breeds that is forgettably more than I ever, ever wanted to know. None of these is essential to enjoying the fictional series, but will enhance the enjoyment for those inclined toward technologies or fuller context. The factual articles don't seem to be appearing in any logical order (i.e., none so far on fundamentals like contemporary agriculture, heating, storage, kinship terminology, education, etc.). Their addition to the series points up the remarkably collaborative nature of this enterprise. A genealogy of the American characters has been fixed, and no rocket scientists can appear. Nevertheless, a lot of basic and vital skills seem to emerge from among the people of Grantville. Some technologies suddenly blossom in the novels (like aircraft!), but these short stories will tend to make them look less arbitrary as we are given the backstories.

The one illustration, on the cover of Grantville Gazette (I), belongs to an amusing story on Peter Paul Rubens, a real Dutch painter of the day. Another "Rubens" is the cover picture for "1634: The Ram Rebellion." These stories, and more, can be found via a website subscription at Baen Books, for a bit less. Since some of these short stories began as emails, I guess this is appropriate. One finds historical portraits of the real personnages there as well.

A disappointing entry in the 1632 franchise.......2006-05-12

I was very surprised to find myself not liking so much of this book. I am a big fan of the 1632 series, and my previous reads have met all my expectations. However, too much of the Grantville Gazette appears to be filler, and uninteresting filler at that. If you're going to flesh out the characters and background of a fiction series, it should be with other fiction stories (in my humble opinion). The large Fact section was for me a waste of space, while the story The Sewing Circle, by Gorg Huff, was long to the point of self-indulgence - like a charlie horse, I was begging for it to be over long before the end finally arrived. The other four fiction stories were enjoyable, but I can't quite say they were worth the price of the book - kind of like buying an entire CD because there are one or two songs on it you like. Hopefully the other Grantville Gazette books will be improvements over this initial offering.

Fun Shorts.......2006-03-31

Eric Flint is the creator of the "1632" series and he does contribute to this volume of short stories but that contribution is minor. A short story called "Portraits" is the extent of it. It is still a good collection. It is comprised of stories set in the 1632 universe in which a West Virginia town gets transported back to the Hundred Years War. Some of the stories are from professionals and a few are from amateurs. Each is worthwhile. There are also a couple of "fact" articles explaining how modern technology was adapted to the 1632 time frame. These too are informative.

Portraits - this is the story by Flint. It takes place during the siege of Amsterdam. It's only real merit is that it explains a transfer of modern medical technology to the "enemy". The title comes from the artist, Reubens, who paints the portraits of a few of the American delegation.

Anna's Story - Takes place immediately after the ring of fire. It is the story of a young German girl who is taken in by a surly old curmudgeon and the relationship that develops. It is a sweet story with no real action.

Curio and Relic - is about a Viet Nam vet who leads a solitary life before the Ring of Fire. He is willing to do his part to help the transplanted American community but he does not want to go into the army. Instead, he serves as a scrounger and is only slowly drawn into public service because he seeks the real need.

The Sewing Circle - is my favorite story in this collection. It deals with a group of teens who have an idea to make a profit in the new circumstances. They decide to begin to build sewing machines. They are good kids but are handicapped by the fact that most people don't take kids seriously.

The Rudolstadt Colloquy - covers a theological debate between various sects of Lutherans. Into the European mix are added the Missouri Synod and the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church of America). I found it interesting but I am a pastor.

The fact articles deal with the problems of radio in the 1632 setting, the problems with pharmaceuticals in that setting and a discourse on the varieties of horses around at that time.

A good supplement.......2006-02-23

This book is basically made up of stories that didn't make an earlier anthology. The first four do a nice job in elaborating on the integration of Grantsville into the 1639s. However, the technical article on radios seemed like padding and was something only a tech could read, nevertheless enjoy.

Average customer rating:

Into the 30 Years War...
A feel-good novel
I still remember...
Silly but serious
Flint blends premises that have been better done elsewhere

1632 (Assiti Shards)
Eric Flint
Manufacturer: Baen
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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1633
1634: The Galileo Affair (The Ring of Fire)
Ring of Fire (Assiti Shards)
The Grantville Gazette
1634: The Baltic War

ASIN: 0671319728

Book Description

FREEDOM AND JUSTICE -- AMERICAN STYLE

1632 And in northern Germany things couldn't get much worse. Famine. Disease. Religous war laying waste the cities. Only the aristocrats remained relatively unscathed; for the peasants, death was a mercy.

2000 Things are going OK in Grantville, West Virginia, and everybody attending the wedding of Mike Stearn's sister (including the entire local chapter of the United Mine Workers of America, which Mike leads) is having a good time.

THEN, EVERYTHING CHANGED....

When the dust settles, Mike leads a group of armed miners to find out what happened and finds the road into town is cut, as with a sword. On the other side, a scene out of Hell: a man nailed to a farmhouse door, his wife and daughter attacked by men in steel vests. Faced with this, Mike and his friends don't have to ask who to shoot. At that moment Freedom and Justice, American style, are introduced to the middle of the Thirty Years' War.

Customer Reviews:

Into the 30 Years War..........2007-10-14

A good book. I've read a lot of alternative history novels but not one that involved sending an entire modern community into the past.

The premise of the book, that a West Virginia town is send lock, stock and barrel to a Germany in the grips of the 30 Years War is an interesting one and a plot device that would seem to explain how the community seems to have enough shotguns, hunting rifles and pistols to arm every man, woman and child for miles around. Oh well. It does allow the story to progress and it gives the displaced Americans a chance to survive long enough to begin rewriting the history of Europe and even creating a new United States... the United States of Europe.

Lots of good history and good writing here. I look forward to reading more of these!

A feel-good novel.......2007-09-10

Occasionally it is nice to stumble upon a feel-good novel like this one. Everything always turns out well due to the cleverness of the clearly superior heroes and heroines, (our side ... the good guys) constantly out-generaling the evil baddies and always overcoming the old prejudices to win the hearts of suitors.

I couldn't take a steady diet of them. I think too much of a good thing rots the mind and soul, but if I happen to hit one occasionally, it's nice to know that, for the next 400 pages goodness will constantly prevail and I will not be troubled in my sleep by something I've read.

This type of book must be organized into a series of vignettes. In a sense, nothing really happens, but lots of incidents must take place to fill out the pages. There really is no true dramatic tension ... more like a series of challenges and puzzles.

On a technical note, there is a disorienting movement between a modern feel and a mideaval feel. For a few pages we are in an american head, then in a mideaval world feel. The author is much more interesting when he's in mideaval mode but, the process of the book seems to be one of turning everone in mideaval Europe into a grade C American novel mode of thought, so I expect that by the end we'll all be just one big enlightened American family. (I'm about half way through now.)

I still remember..........2007-08-25

I read this book in 2001 and I still remember the amazing characterizations of the principal players in the book. In fact, I have never read ANY novel, before or since, which had better or more fully developed characters. The plot is in its proper place because of that fact. And it has one hell of a plot. I've often wondered why it was never made into a movie - THAT is a real mystery to me. My favorite movies? Ordinary People, Pulp Fiction, American Beauty to name a few.

Silly but serious.......2007-08-20

The premise of this book is silly; if it isn't then, why is it so hard to explain to people without them looking at me like I am nuts?

That being said, I really liked it. It tells the story of a small town in West Virginia being transported back to the 17th century, smack in the middle of the 30 Years War. Wackiness ensues.

The characters don't spend a lot of time figuring out the why, but are confronted with the realities of living in the middle of a nasty and confused war in central Europe.They have books, TV, and guns - but they are surrounded by enemies from all sides.

Sure, I will say it is silly. But it was compelling and has good characters and very very good research. You should really check it out if you are a fan of Alternate History or Military Sci Fi.

Flint blends premises that have been better done elsewhere.......2007-07-26

Reading Eric Flint's "1632" reminded me of two science fiction works. The first is L. Sprague de Camp's classic Lest Darkness Fall, which is predicated on a similar premise: a man from the present finds himself suddenly transported to the collapsing Roman Empire, where he uses his knowledge of modern ways to change history. In this novel, however, it is not a solitary historian who is dropped into the past, but an entire West Virginia town. This gives them a significant advantage over de Camp's character, as they have tools, weapons, even a functioning power plant to provide electricity in a pre-steam engine age. The circumstances may not be quite as challenging, but the similar goals lead to a lot of fun, as the residents of Grantville find themselves bringing American values and know-how to the tumultuous struggle of the Thirty Years War.

This transformation of 17th century Germany brought to mind another science fiction tale, the Janissaries series by Jerry Pournelle. In it, a group of American mercenaries are plucked off of a hill in Africa and taken to a planet to supervise the harvesting of a narcotic plant. Like Eric Flint's West Virginians, they encounter humans from earlier ages who had been deposited there previously. Yet whereas Pournelle used this scenario to depict very human fragmentation and conflict between the mercenaries, Flint's Grantvillians present a virtuous front adhering to idealized values - a front that is perhaps a little TOO virtuous. Such an approach constricts the novel, as well as creating lopsided clashes between the united Americans and their outmatched opponents. It would have been far more interesting to depict a divided community with opportunists allying themselves with Grantville's enemies.

It all adds up to a series that is entertaining but largely predictable. Hopefully Flint and his subsequent collaborators overcame these limitations in later volumes of this popular series, which makes for enjoyable reading but left me with the sense that it could have been so much better.

Fractured Europe, 1600-1721 (Blackwell History of Europe)

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Fractured Europe, 1600-1721 (Blackwell History of Europe)
David Sturdy
Manufacturer: Blackwell Publishing Limited
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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General | Europe | History | Subjects | Books

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Europe in the Sixteenth Century (Blackwell History of Europe)
Europe in Crisis, 1598-1648 (Blackwell Classic Histories of Europe)
Europe Unfolding, 1648-1688 (Blackwell Classic Histories of Europe)
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A Monarchy Transformed: Britain, 1603-1714 (Penguin History of Britain)

ASIN: 0631205136

Book Description

This book presents a narrative history of Europe, including Britain and Ireland, from the beginning of the seventeenth century to the Treaty of Nystadt in 1721. It is organized around geographical regions, paying as much attention to northern and eastern Europe, as to western and southern.The narrative is divided into two sections, supported by maps, illustrations and other supporting material. The first covers the period from 1600 to1660 and is followed by an assessment of the themes that emerge from this section. The second takes up the story from 1660 and follows it through to 1721. The conclusion reflects on the most significant themes of the post-1660 decades.Whilst the core of the book is devoted to the political and diplomatic evolution of Europe in the seventeenth century, the author also integrates the visual arts and sciences into the discussion and assesses their influence on the wider historical development of the continent.

The Blessed Revolution: English Politics and the Coming of War, 1621-1624 (Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History)

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The Blessed Revolution: English Politics and the Coming of War, 1621-1624 (Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History)
Thomas Cogswell
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Europe | History | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0521023130

Book Description

This book examines the background to the English military intervention in the Thirty Years War. Blending accounts of diplomacy and factional in-fighting at Court with parliamentary and popular politics, it aims to illuminate the â€~revolutionâ€™ of 1624 when the Palatine crisis forced James I to abandon his long-held dream of an Anglo-Spanish dynastic alliance in favour of a more aggressive policy against the Habsburgs. In studying the English polity in a period of crisis, Professor Cogswell challenges many of the revisionist assumptions about early seventeenth-century England and highlights the dangers in confusing the history of Court faction with the broader political history of the period. In particular, the author stresses the vital importance of Parliament, an institution which in 1624 had no trouble delaying the passage of the subsidy bill until the government redressed a long list of grievances. Indeed, the â€~blessed revolutionâ€™ celebrated the evolution of Parliament into what many contemporaries regarded as its proper role in the state as much as it did the collapse of the longstanding Anglo-Spanish entente.

The Warwolf: A Peasant Chronicle of the Thirty Years War

Average customer rating:

A thoroughly enjoyable "beach" read!
interesting history, not good writing
30 years war from worm's eye perspective
The Warwolf by Hermann Lons, translator R. Kvinnesland
A seldom seen view

The Warwolf: A Peasant Chronicle of the Thirty Years War
Hermann Lons
Manufacturer: Westholme Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1594160260

Book Description

The Thirty Years War, fought between 1618 and 1648, was a ruthless struggle for political and religious control of central Europe. Engulfing most of present-day Germany, the war claimed at least ten million lives. The lengthy conflict was particularly hard on the general population, as thousands of undisciplined mercenaries serving Sweden, Spain, France, the Netherlands, and various German principalities, robbed, murdered, and pillaged communities; disease spread out of control and starvation became commonplace. In The Warwolf, Hermann Löns' acclaimed historical novel, the tragedy and horrors of war in general, and these times in particular are revealed.

The Warwolf, based on the author's careful research, traces the life of Harm Wulf, a land-owning peasant farmer of the northern German heath who realizes after witnessing the murder of neighbors and family at the hands of marauding troops that he has a choice between compromising his morals or succumbing to inevitable torture and death. Despite his desire for peace, Wulf decides to band with his fellow farmers and live like "wolves," fiercely protecting their isolated communities from all intruders. Löns' brilliant portrayal of the two sides of any person who has faced a moral crisis—in Harm Wulf's case, whether to kill or be killed—continues to resonate. Originally published in 1910, The Warwolf is presented here for the first time in modern English.

Customer Reviews:

A thoroughly enjoyable "beach" read!.......2007-04-30

Having just returned from a very relaxed and typical fun in the sun vacation where I brought The Warwolf as my book for reading at the pool and the beach, I wanted to share my thoughts on what for me was an entirely enjoyable read.

I am a fan of historical novels and so thought that this might be a good book and boy was I right. I had very little recollection of learning about the Thirty Years War was from my childhood grade school studies. Reading this book was a very comfortable way for me to get familiar again with an important period in human history and at the same time read about the story of a man - Harm Wulf - who cared so deeply for his family and his community, and how he dealt with living in such a tumultuous time.

Having finished the book in just over a day (contrasting an earlier reviewer's comment that this was not a page turner!) I'm now interested in reading more about the Thirty Years War from a more historical perspective.

The book is also perfect for my reading group and I'm going to recommend it at our next gathering.

Thank you Mr. Kvinnesland for bringing this book to us.

interesting history, not good writing.......2007-01-26

I wanted to enjoy this book, because of the Wall St. Journal article. The story is moderately engaging, but the "plot" is simply a narriative, and the characters are petrified wood. The prose style is Louis L'Amour or worse. One does get a good feel for the atmosphere of the times; as to whether it is good and accurate cultural history I am not qualified to say. I know this is an earnest effort, and I'm not trying to knock the guy who did the translation (it is probably just as stolid in German), but if you're looking for good German literature, this ain't it.

30 years war from worm's eye perspective.......2007-01-11

The book read more like a fable than history and if you want to understand the scope of this piece of history, this is not the book to read. It is not a "page turner" for sure.

The Warwolf by Hermann Lons, translator R. Kvinnesland.......2006-12-07

Firtly I am not a kid but a 69 year old retiree. I found this book a well written, very readable and very well translated account of the life and times during Germany in the terrible years of the Thirty Years War. The reader gets a real "feel" for the way in which people lived and felt during those years, and the translator's expert knowledge of the history of the era gives rise to very interesting and informative footnotes. Highly recommended for those who like a good historical novel.
Herb Parker Queensland Australia

A seldom seen view.......2006-07-20

Colorfully and emotionally provides the usually ignored perspective of the noncombatant to the reality of war.

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