A review by theinquisitxor
The Devil's Historians: How Modern Extremists Abuse the Medieval Past by Amy S. Kaufman
2.0
This is a difficult book to rate and review. As someone who studied history and focused on the Middle Ages, I learned and worked on projects surrounding this topic. It is something I feel very passionate about. I love helping educate people on the Middle Ages and helping them understand history better. I feel very strongly about this topic and I was excited to finally get my hands on this book.
From a scholarly perspective, this book is basically worthless. That's a little harsh, but the formatting, research, and references are not at the level they should be. I don't think I would ever cite this book in actual scholarly work. There are not enough references, nor do the authors show where/how they got their information.
One of the reviews say that this book reads more like someone's tumblr post and, sadly, yeah. It kinda does. Things are not well researched, planned, or formatted. I don't want to get into a rant-y review, but I was very disappointed at something like this out of University of Toronto Press. The scholarship surrounding this topic should be doing much more, especially books like this that are reaching the mainstream a little more than most scholarly publications.
Overall, very disappointed by what I assumed was going to be a great work on an important, pressing matter in the field and in current events.
From a scholarly perspective, this book is basically worthless. That's a little harsh, but the formatting, research, and references are not at the level they should be. I don't think I would ever cite this book in actual scholarly work. There are not enough references, nor do the authors show where/how they got their information.
One of the reviews say that this book reads more like someone's tumblr post and, sadly, yeah. It kinda does. Things are not well researched, planned, or formatted. I don't want to get into a rant-y review, but I was very disappointed at something like this out of University of Toronto Press. The scholarship surrounding this topic should be doing much more, especially books like this that are reaching the mainstream a little more than most scholarly publications.
Overall, very disappointed by what I assumed was going to be a great work on an important, pressing matter in the field and in current events.