Rating: 
Summary: couldn't even finish it
Review: william manchester is completely incapable of writing a simple sentance. This book was required for a freshman honors world history class, which it was not appropiate for. not only because of it's constant perverse content but because of the dragged out boring but complecated way that he writes. not only does he paint a dim picture of the world back then but makes the europe seem extremely currupt, mainly the church, a strong negitive opion shines through. the only part of the book where manchester seems engaged is the perverse sexual interactions between young girls and their fathers. something is not write about the image he plants in readers heads about the time period.
Rating: 
Summary: A Mind Changing Good Read
Review: I first read this book about ten years and have reread it at least once. The writing is amazingly understandable considering the complexity of the subject. Manchester treats his subject fairly. Catholic, I found a balance between his writing about the Catholic Church and then about the Protestant Churches enlightening and reaffirming. This in effect was mind changing because I had not previously known about the Protestant backlash that mimicked the Inquisition. The presentation of the slow change in Medieval times is a significant contrast to present day change. This has become one of my favorite books to recommend for a good read.
Rating: 
Summary: Well, now, let's not get too critical.....
Review: This isn't quite a tabloid, and it isn't quite a history book. Mr. Manchester is writing this book for the "masses". It's true, it's kind of an "old fashioned" look at the Middle Ages, BUT,
my bet is the truth is somewhere between today's revisionists and Mr. Manchester. I find it sort of odd that no one mentioned the seemingly endless pages on Luther, especially when the book is over half finished before you finally get to the Renaissance and Magellan's "biography."
Evidently some of the reviewers didn't read Manchester's
statements on bibliography, or they would have known he did take a lot of his information from Will Durant....speaking of old information and old ideas of the Middle ages..
I found this book to be pretty enjoyable reading. If you take into account that the average reading level of the "average" American is somewhere btween the 4th and 6th grade level, you realize it's hard to get people to read anything at all. It's nice that people can read some semblance of history in an enjoyable narrative rather than nothing at all. Most people won't read the more "sophisticated" and "scholarly" works of history at all, so at least their getting something at their level.
Rating:
Summary: Stay away
Review: William Manchester is an historian capable of excellent scholarship and astute analysis, but you wouldn't know it by reading this book.Manchester commits the all too frequent mistake of viewing history from the present backward rather than from the past forward. This leads him to make simplistic and erroneous statements about the "Medieval Mind," view the Rennaissance as being detached from the Middle Ages, and claim that the "voyages of discovery" created the modern world. The book reads more like a bad high school essay than a work by a distinguished historian and author. Indeed, aside from the first thirty pages, the book isn't even about the medieval period. In fact, much of it is not about the Rennaissance, either. The book, which he admits, is mostly about Ferdinand Magellan. So please, stay away from this book. There is nothing to learn from it, and it may give you a bad idea of the kind of historian William Manchester really is.
Rating: 
Summary: Definitely not the first book to read about the Middle Ages
Review: This is definitely not the first book you want to read about the Middle Ages. Notwithstanding the laudatory comments of other reviewers, and the virtual reverence in which William Manchester seems to be held. There is quite a controversy about this book, to judge by the other reviews - which I urge you to read to get a flavour for the dispute. Here is why I say you should avoid this book. The man who revolutionised the way we think of the Middle Ages was NOT William Manchester. It was Norman F. Cantor. His book, "The Civilization of the Middle Ages" was the first book to focus on the culture and religion of the period as opposed to the political history. And before Cantor it was a commonly held view that Western Europe during this period was a dank hell-hole with no redeeming value for civilization - indeed most people referred to the period as "The Dark Ages". Cantor changed this forever. Cantor's enthusiasm and erudition is legendary. The book, when it appeared in 1963, created a sensation - and it has recently been expanded and updated. Why all of this about Cantor in a review of Manchester? Because NONE of these things can be said about Manchester's book. Now the apologists for his book suggest that those of us who are critical of it should "lighten up"; that "A World Lit Only By Fire" is an introductory volume for general audiences; that it is beautifully written - and so forth. Fair enough. But on at least part of this we will have to agree to disagree. Yes it is an introductory volume, but BECAUSE of that I have cause to shudder. This is NOT the first book I would want a general reader to encounter as he or she launch forth on a voyage of discover of the Middle Ages. For one thing Manchester is dead wrong about so many things it takes your breath away. This has been adequately documented elsewhere, so I will not delve into details. Manchester almost exclusively uses secondary sources - which is not a crime in and of itself - but the astonishing fact is that he does not even acknowledge the existence of Cantor! THAT is criminal. It is almost as if he wants to wish Cantor (who would be his competitor in a sense) out of existence. And the worst part of it is that Manchester's view of what life was like in the Middle Ages is vastly out of date - it is unrepresentative of what we now know to be the case. The first time I tried to read this book I actually put it aside in disgust after sixty pages. But I forced myself to finish. It is full of trite generalisations, glib commentaries, vapid truisms and empty but expansive judgements. This is not to say Manchester did not love his subject matter. It is to say that his grasp of it is tragically flawed. The general (and indeed specialist) reader is advised to RUN to "The Civilization of the Middle Ages" by Norman F. Cantor and to steer clear of this below par effort from an otherwise quite brilliant writer.
Rating:
Summary: Phenomenal book on the awakening
Review: This book is an inspiring compilation of the events surrounding the end of the dark ages. It is primarily three parts -- the dark ages, Martin Luther and the other theologians who broke from the Catholic Church, and Magellan. It is fascinating in that it overlays concurrent historical figures from discoverers, to theologians, to adventurers, to artists, to scientists. Awesome -- I've read it three times!!
Rating:
Summary: An airport novel masquarading as history
Review: There are plenty of trashy historical novels to keep us entertained in planes and this might be a good example (although I read it on a coach) except that it is claiming to be factual. Well, I am a graduate student in the medieval intellectual history and I can tell you this book is almost complete fantasy. Some of the events Manchester describes did happen (although by no means all) but he totally fails to supply any sort of context or explanation. His bias is so glaring as to be embarrassing and he gives the impression of having a one track mind. If you want to learn something go elsewhere. If you want good historical fiction go elsewhere. If you like history of the sort that says Nero fiddled while Rome burned or King Alfred burnt the cakes then this is for you. Just don't let your professor see you reading it.
Rating: 
Summary: summaritive but gripping
Review: As it has been said, this book is very summative in its treatment of the period and might leave less intelligent readers with a stereotyped understanding of the period. However, the book could not have been any more than summative, given that Manchester's expertise is in modern history and that all his sources were secondary. He even admits that concept of the book grew out of a prologue he was designated to write for a biography of Magellan. Manchester's work, despite these flaws, in a captivating read. He has a gripping and masterful use of the language to provide deliciously lucid descriptions, and he has a penchant and flair for absorbing descriptions of the debauched frolicking of the times. While the section of the book dealing with Magellan may suffer from the work's inherent bias, it is a fantastically moving and tragic read that could have been developed into a larger, entirely biographical work.
Rating:
Summary: Don't make this the first book you read on the era
Review: I first read this book when I was a senior in high school and it was horrible, horrible, horrible. Part of that, of course, was my fault because I wasn't really prepared to read this book at that time. But at least part of the blame rests with Manchester. His book is horribly organized, there's a lot of name dropping, and there's a lot of head-spinning minutae that I found to be neither important nor put in its appropriate context. That was the first read. About nine years later, after college and law school, I revisited this work. I realized that as I grew, so did the book, but it's still wasn't great. This time around the names, references, and details made sense, but it was also clear to me that Manchester did not succeed, in my view anyway, in showing exactly what happened between the Renaissance and Middle Ages to mark the pronounced difference between the two. Recommendation: if you're already familiar with the Middle Ages, it's probably a 4-star book that will fill in some holes in your knowledge of the period (as it did for me during my second visit with this book). However, if you're unfamiliar with the era and are thinking about learning a bit about the Middle Ages and Renaissance, DO NOT START HERE. Try "A Distant Mirror" by Barbara Tuchman and perhaps something like J.M. Robert's "A History of Europe," or, if you're really ambitious, his "History of the World." After this, I guarantee Manchester's book will make much more sense.
Rating:
Summary: Old fashioned anti-theism
Review: Selective scholarship to support his anti-catholic, anti-christian thesis. Not balanced and not enjoyable.
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