“On the morning of October 29, 312, the Roman soldier Constantine walked through the gates of Rome at the front of his army.”
This is the second of the history books by Susan Wise Bauer that I’ve read now. Her approach is expansive, trying to cover huge sections of time and huge sections of geography in relatively short chapters. This obviously has limits, but the goal seems to be offering up a working sense of what was happening in the world in the given years, especially outside of well-documented Western spaces like the late Roman empire and France and Great Britain. In addition, she’s fond of using a lot of primary texts, some of which are more cultural than historical to add value and understanding where large top-down histories might not offer up as much about lives within the time.
The effect can be jarring. While she is often using a chunk of time (say about 50 years), she will sometimes move back and forth a little in time to address the same time in a different part of the world. This is not exactly a timeline, but instead constantly updating the stories already begun, even it means jumping forward or back a generation to cover things. You tend to spend your time with one place at time at time. So if you’re reading about Attila the Hun, the court of Justin, Macbeth’s revolt, or something else, you’re not likely getting other things at the same time. It’s an information dump and overload, with good writing. The effect is episodic, which does help with diving in and out of the subject material.
