Peter H. Wilson is Chichele Professor of the History of War at the University of Oxford.
If, like most people, you know little more about the Holy Roman
Empire than Voltaire's bon mot--that it 'was neither holy, nor
Roman, nor an empire'--then this is the book for you. In his
masterly study of the original '1,000-year Reich' (Hitler's was
merely a grotesque caricature), the Oxford professor Peter H.
Wilson condenses a great deal of modern scholarship while wearing
his learning lightly... Wilson's account is distinctive in treating
the empire neither as a sequence of obstacles on the path to
national self-determination, nor as a blueprint for the European
Union. Instead, he seeks to understand how and why it worked.
-- Daniel Johnson Sunday Times
Hugely impressive... Wilson is an assured guide through the
millennium-long labyrinth of papal-imperial relations.
-- John Adamson Literary Review
Superb... Wilson attempts something very ambitious--to treat the
history by categories... Wilson's history represents the
culmination of a lifetime of research and thought, and in its scope
and depth of detail is an astonishing scholarly achievement. The
author moves from the grand themes to detail with felicity...Wilson
uses a relaxed and easy prose, turning antiquated and odd pieces of
evidence or description into approachable and comprehensible
explanations... [What] pleasure that a massive work of scholarship
like Wilson's can give the conscientious reader... This book [is] a
very stimulating read.
-- Jonathan Steinberg The Spectator
Engrossing... Even those who know the empire well will read this
book with profit... Peter Wilson is to be congratulated on writing
the only English-language work that deals with the empire from
start to finish and on the basis of staggering erudition.
-- Brendan Simms The Times
Wilson has given [the Holy Roman Empire] its longest and most
readable one-volume history in the modern era.
-- Steve Donoghue Christian Science Monitor
An ambitious, sprawling tome that seeks to rehabilitate the Holy
Roman Empire's reputation by re-examining its place within the
larger sweep of European history...Heart of Europe succeeds
splendidly in rescuing the empire from its critics.
-- Mark Molesky Wall Street Journal
In his remarkable book, Wilson argues that a broad and deep
perspective on the old Reich--broader and deeper than those
available to either Charles IV or Goethe--discloses a fundamentally
positive vision of that much-maligned institution. Wilson has set
himself a staggering task, but it is one at which he succeeds
heroically. Over the course of nearly a thousand pages, Wilson
recounts with unflagging lucidity the history of an empire spanning
continental Europe from the North Sea to the Vistula and from the
Baltic to southern Italy, which endured for more than a millennium,
between Charlemagne and Napoleon. Wilson does more. He tracks the
medieval Empire back to its ancient roots, and he excavates its
subterranean modern afterlife. His book amounts to a panoramic
vision of pre-modern Europe, expanding outward from the vast and
varied landscapes of the Reich...Despite its vast sweep, this is
remarkably fine-grained history.
-- Len Scales Times Literary Supplement
Distils in over a thousand pages the millennium from Charlemagne to
Napoleon. It is indispensable to any serious library.
-- Simon Heffer Daily Telegraph
An impressive and inspiring magnum opus that tells the history of
the Holy Roman Empire from its medieval beginnings to its end in
the nineteenth century...Wilson gives an overview on the history of
its perception in the following centuries and its role in modern
political debates. What is even more impressive is Wilson's
approach to the book's structure: instead of telling the empire's
history chronologically, he chooses an analytical outline. In this
way, he points out connections as well as breaks between the
medieval and the early modern empire...[A] tour de force.
-- Lena Oetzel Austrian History Yearbook
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