Katherine

A well-crafted history; nothing an academic would find hugely useful, but an eminently readable summary of one of the most turbulent periods in Earth's history. Gaddis has a fairly clear right-wing bias, but as long as you bear that in mind this is a useful and enjoyable book

A fun read, well plotted and fast paced. A bit too royalist to be completely to my taste, perhaps.

Well written and strongly argued. I really appreciate the decision to cover the Scottish and Irish situations as fully as they are, I only wish they were integrated more into the text rather than being separate chapters, as it breaks up the flow a bit. But I nitpick. Excellent grounding in the sources, overall very persuaded by the thesis and looking forward to tackling the second volume

A book of two halves. The premodern stuff feels like an extended introduction, with not enough detail and some things entirely skipped over. It feels like a book which really should have started with the Ottoman period, as from there on Hourani seems much more in command of the material and has more to say

A novel about womanhood, with plenty of palaeontology and queer longing, dressed up as a Frankenstein sequel. I think Ms Wollstonecraft Shelley would have more or less approved.