Becoming Charlemagne

Becoming Charlemagne; Europe, Baghdad, and the Empires of A.D. 800, Jeff Sypeck, HarperCollins, 2006

The Dark and Middle Ages have very little written about them. Outside of history aficionados and perhaps the odd English lit major, who knows what the Song of Roland was about or can explain the significance of Karl becoming Charlemagne? In my case it is a rhetorical question. I can. I know the story, can discuss the things that led to the events surrounding Roland and Charlemagne. This book promised to illuminate them more.

Instead it is written by a Catholic apologist who reveres all things Catholic, hates all things not Catholic, and has trouble maintaining reader interest. It is seldom indeed that I find myself putting down one book long enough to read a half dozen or more books before coming back to it.

I kept waiting for this book to present some sort of intriguing story. It continued to introduce new characters and vaguely allude to how they would eventually become important...but in presenting them as background it failed to make them interesting. In fact, the book itself had the same problem. I knew my odds of liking it were greatly reduced when I put it down in favor of an In Touch glossy magazine I found laying around.

Just to clarify, I find In Touch and its ilk to be banal, insipid, pointless, and completely lacking in intelligence. And I picked that up as an excuse to put down Becoming Charlemagne. It was at that point I quit reading the book about 60 pages short of finishing it. I was not interested in his writing style, was not being introduced to much learning and found it frankly too over the top defensive of all things Leo.