Michael North (2) (1954–)

A useful, comprehensive history of the Baltic region from Viking times to 2010, reasonably well balanced between political, social, economic and cultural history. North writes like an old-fashioned academic historian, with a lot of verifiable facts and no speculation or padding, which is efficient and allows him to cover a remarkable amount of ground in 330 pages and create a very useful reference book, but the total absence of personality in the text makes it a bit soul-destroying if you try to read it cover-to-cover.

Obviously, if you have a book focussed on a sea, you have to decide how far inland you should allow yourself to go: North's approach seems to be to try to avoid writing a complete history of every country with a Baltic coastline, but to fill in enough context that we will know where we are. And he obviously assumes that we will be reasonably familiar with at least German and Russian history. We do get more background detail on Sweden, Denmark and the Baltic States. But in a book that covers the Thirty Years War in a couple of paragraphs, you need to stay pretty alert: blink and you will miss something vital... But it did tell me a lot of stuff I didn't know, or couldn't have put properly in context, so I found it very useful.

If I'd looked a little more carefully before buying this book, I'd have realised that Professor North originally wrote it in German, and I'd at least have been able to spare myself the rather pedestrian translation.… (mehr)

I really wanted to like this book. I really did. The topic sounded both unfairly neglected and potentially fascinating. But while the book is incredibly detailed, and probably the most informative book on the subject I've ever seen, it's also the driest and least exciting popular history I've ever read.

Mr. North seems to provide readers with every single important name, date, event, and place relevant to the history of the Baltic region. But that's all he gives his readers. He doesn't provide any informative descriptions of people or places named, or any descriptions of the battles that are only identified by name yet seem to have altered the course of kings, countries, and alliances. And the sparse maps included provide little information on the ever-changing areas of interest or control on the part of various city-states, countries, and monarchs.

In sum, Mr. North's book contains everything you need to pass a test on the region without helping you understand or relate to the people and events it covers. And without making you to care about any of it. Mr. North should be commended on his research and obvious knowledge of the region and its history. But I wish this book had been written by someone like John Julius Norwich instead, who understands how to make sweeping histories compelling.

I hope that Mr. North, or someone else, someday aggressively revises this book by adding copious illustrations, biographic information about the people and places mentioned, and interesting anecdotes as to them all. It would probably be a two-volume work, but it could be thrilling rather than sleep-inducing.… (mehr)