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This is real history, not fantasy, I just did some related podcast
history lessons last two summers especially, all related, on
Byzantium, Rome, Vikings, Crusades, Renaissance, all of this
overlaps and more than one University history professor referenced
this work for it's real history, most of these courses were great,
start off with, " why it matters ", and all of it overlaps, each course.
Maybe I will post them later.
To the Irish and for St. Patrick's day.
On a side note, Irish Scholars and Monks made the
Vikings famous in their works. Those vikings not smart
enough to hire the Irish are lost to history, and the
smart ones live in eternity through the writings of
Irish Scholars and religious people, pretty incredible.
HOW THE IRISH SAVED CIVILIZATION
http://www.randomhouse.com/features/cahill/irish.html
Written by Thomas Cahill
Category: History - Ireland
Imprint: Anchor
Format: Trade Paperback, 256 pages
Pub Date: February 1996
Price: $12.95
ISBN: 0-385-41849-3
The perfect St. Patrick's Day gift, and a book in the best tradition of popular history -- the untold story of Ireland's role in maintaining Western culture while the Dark Ages settled on Europe.
Every year millions of Americans celebrate St. Patrick's Day, but they may not be aware of how great an influence St. Patrick was on the subsequent history of civilization. Not only did he bring Christianity to Ireland, he instilled a sense of literacy and learning that would create the conditions that allowed Ireland to become "the isle of saints and scholars" -- and thus preserve Western culture while Europe was being overrun by barbarians.
In this entertaining and compelling narrative, Thomas Cahill tells the story of how Europe evolved from the classical age of Rome to the medieval era. Without Ireland, the transition could not have taken place. Not only did Irish monks and scribes maintain the very record of Western civilization -- copying manuscripts of Greek and Latin writers, both pagan and Christian, while libraries and learning on the continent were forever lost -- they brought their uniquely Irish world-view to the task.
As Cahill delightfully illustrates, so much of the liveliness we associate with medieval culture has its roots in Ireland. When the seeds of culture were replanted on the European continent, it was from Ireland that they were germinated.
In the tradition of Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror, How The Irish Saved Civilization reconstructs an era that few know about but which is central to understanding our past and our cultural heritage. But it conveys its knowledge with a winking wit that aptly captures the sensibility of the unsung Irish who relaunched civilization.
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"How the Irish Saved Civilization is a shamelessly engaging, effortlessly scholarly, utterly refreshing history of the origins of the Irish soul and its huge contribution to Western culture...For its portrait of St. Patrick alone, it will resonate in the memory."
--Thomas Keneally, author of Schindler's List and The Great Shame
"Charming and poetic...lyrical, playful, penetrating and serious...An entirely engaging, delectable voyage into the distant past, a small treasure."
--The New York Times
"Cahill's lively prose breathes life into a 1,600-year-old history."
--Boston Globe
"A lovely and engrossing tale...Graceful and instructive."
--Los Angeles Times
"An utterly absorbing and entertaining chronicle of a virtually neglected episode in the annals of Western civilation."
--Booklist
Originally Posted by Horn
