How the Old World Ended


How the Old World Ended: The Anglo-Dutch-American Revolution 1500-1800

by 

2 Stars

How the Old World Ended is unquestionably one of the most disappointing books I have ever read.  I’m a great lover of history and consider myself at least a passably knowledgeable student of the subject.  So when I first saw this book I was immediately excited.  The Industrial Revolution and the birth of our modern world are fascinating historical subjects.  This book, however, was a huge letdown.

I can best describe it as a very poorly written college thesis.  The author’s basic premise seems to be an interesting one, but the writing is so truly terrible that it just becomes completely lost.  If I can take the liberty of quoting another Goodreads reviewer:  “I have a hard time describing, even, what the language is like as it is truly terrible and nearly inaccessible. It almost feels like somebody's college thesis where they were trying to really impress the evaluation team and thought that using long and tortured sentences and archaic phrases and constructions would be the way to make himself stand out. Instead, it's just, frankly, a mess that's nearly impossible to read.”  Not only is most of the book written in this convoluted style with “long and tortured sentences”; at other times the author digresses into casual slang.  At one point he describes a government official’s reaction to an ambassador as telling him “to cool his jets.”  At another point he states that “national history has come to enjoy a utility and status comparable to that of the shoe collection of Imelda Marcos.”  The conflicting and ever-changing writing style does indeed make the book a mess.

Even if one can get past the writing, the information imparted by the author is spotty at best.  Quoting again from another review:  “Sometimes, though, it seemed that the author’s purpose was to inject as many facts as possible, neglecting to always take the effort to further explain. Many times I felt like the history was incomplete, and I was forced to initiate my own research in order to understand what was happening. This was counterproductive, as the whole idea of reading the book was to enlighten me, not cause me to constantly be searching the Internet to fill in the blanks the author had left for me.”

I would recommend avoiding this one.

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