by envisionmg | Jan 21, 2022 | Jim Reviews
Bright Ages is not your usual book about the Middle Ages and not just because it seeks to do away with the “dark ages” myth about the fall of Rome and the west. It’s lay out is episodic. It uses events throughout the middle ages to demonstrate how...
by envisionmg | Feb 12, 2020 | History, Jim Reviews
Writing histories of the British East India Company (EIC) is hard. First of all what is it? Its a multi-national corporation, its a business with governmental authority over a large portion of the Indian subcontinent , it has its own military, and navy. All of it...
by envisionmg | Jan 30, 2020 | History, Jim Reviews
I, like many kids, was forced to read Canterbury Tales when I was in High School. Most of it flew right over my head and asking the teacher didn’t help much. For example what is a Franklin anyway? Liza Picard’s Chaucer’s People is the book I wish I...
by envisionmg | Dec 11, 2019 | Fiction, Jim Reviews
I will be the first to admit the title of This Is How You Lose The Time War was what originally drew to this book. Why yes I do want to learn how to lose a time war (although I probably could without much help). Turns out there is a fantastic book hiding under that...
by envisionmg | Jun 25, 2019 | History, Jim Reviews
Before William Adams (immortalized as John Blackthorn in James Clavel’s novel Shogun) became the first English samurai in the early 1600s there was Yasuke. Yasuke was an African slave/mercenary who ultimately become a samurai and served as a retainer of Ode...
by envisionmg | May 7, 2019 | Jim Reviews
When I was in college I worked in a meat packing plant. There was a little old Vietnamese lady who worked on the same line as I did doing odd jobs. One day in February she handed me an ornate red envelope. Inside the envelope was a two dollar bill. I looked at her...
