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What I’m Reading Now 10

Posted March 14, 2010 by Patrick Young, Esq.

What I’m Reading Now: Warfare In The 17th Century by John Childs.

I Just Finished Reading: The Renaissance At War by Thomas Arnold published by Harper Collins (2001).

Every year I set a reading program for myself, which I then honor in the breach. This year I have decided to concentrate on the period from the end of the reign of the English King Henry VIII until the end of the English civil War. We’ll see how closely I stick to that subject.

At least my first book is on topic. The Renaissance At War is authored by Professor Thomas Arnold of Yale. It is part of a series called the Smithsonian History of Warfare.

I like big, long books. Last month I finished Speeches and Writings of Abraham Lincoln, an 850 page volume. Great book. You really lived with Lincoln through his words.

But I also like really short books as well. Sometimes with a long book, particularly when I’m under pressure at work, I start to lose the thread of the author’s argument. A well written short work on a subject I intend to read more about can give me a concise overview of a subject that I can explore in depth elsewhere.

The Smithsonian books on warfare are all 240 pages long with high quality maps and illustrations. They are short treatments of immense subjects. So far, I like them for their scholarship and brevity.

This installment of the series is one of the best. It covers an aspect of the Renaissance I was less familiar with.

The Renaissance was not just a revolution in art and thought, it was also a time of revolution in warfare. Mounted knights were displaced in a generation by pikemen and arquebusiers carrying primitive, but deadly, firearms. The change in the way wars were fought led to the decline of the knights as a social class and the rise of the powerful dynastic kingdoms.

Weapons and tactics which would destroy millions of lives during the 17th Century, were pioneered in the Renaissance.

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