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Title: Awful
Review: This book came highly reccommended, so I was expecting something at least factually accurate - but it was abysmal. His analysis of the just-post-Roman Christian Church in particular was PAINFUL to read. It was quite clear from his writing that he had not bothered to return to the source documents themselves but had simply stuck with others' interpretation of Christianity. He perpetuated several urban myths about the history of Christianity, and his interpretations of medieval life seemed to assume, frequently, that medieval people not just thought about the world differently than we do (a valid assumption) but that they were substantially dumber than we are (invalid).A student who turned in a paper to me citing this book as fact would probably get points off automatically for lack of ability to adequately analyze sources for factual accuracy. I only finished it out of morbid curiosity.
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