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Title: Written in a vacuum
Review: This book is written in a vacuum. For Menzies to make his thesis persuasive, he has to first of all engage consensus understandings of the historical past he's trying to revise. By not acknowledging longstanding and well-established views that challenge his outlook, Menzies can present his "findings" as if he were the first person ever to take an interest in the maps and other artifacts he uses to build his argument. The book is like a detective story with Menzies as the intrepid investigator, fully oblivious, it seems, that many others--and some much better qualified--have studied the evidence in question and given it a very different interpretation. But I doubt he wishes to persuade real scholars--that would be much too ambitious a task.
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