Cathedral, Forge and Waterwheel

Rating:
Summary: Capable Synthesis of Recent Scholarship (circa mid 1990's)
Review: Correction to the Amazon listing: this book is authored by Frances and Joseph Gies, not just Joseph. It says so on the cover of the book.

Husband and wife team of (amateur?) scholars, synthesize recent scholarship (from mid 60's on) on the middle ages for your reading pleasure.

As the title hints at and the subtitle: Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages, spells out, the focus is the manner in which technology and invention transformed society in the area soon to be known as "the West".

The broadest service this book provides is to cue the reader in to the massive scholarship on the subject that exists outside the English speaking world of academia. The French in particular have made many developments in this field of study, but their work seems to be only occasionally translated.

The Gies' are careful footnoters and their method is fairly rigorous. Because they rely on the scholarship that is anywhere from 10 to 200 years old, there are bound to be statements that are inaccurate. This does not effect the merit of the book.

This book provides and excellent introduction to the scholarship on the history of the middle ages, specficically as it relates to technology. However, the bibliography points the interested reader to a fuller picture of the available scholarship, and therfore Cathedral, Forge and Waterwheel, is useful in that sense as well.

Probably not for strictly "general" readers, nor for scholars/academics, this book is best for the motivated lay reader.

Rating:
Summary: Good book, but some flaws of fact & one stupid opinion
Review: I liked this book and will keep it around, but it does get some
facts wrong. E.g., the book discusses printing & Gutenberg at
some length (as it should) but is all wrong about Gutenberg's
ink chemistry. This is no small point. Gutenberg's books are
famous for their stable, glossy ink. This (Gieses') book says
G's ink was based on carbon black (which fades). Everyone has
known since 1983 or soon after (Google "Gutenberg ink cyclotron")
that Gutenberg created metallic inks. His inks were better than
most which followed. The Gieses should have been aware of this
by 1994, when they published their book. I think this sort of
error is common in survey works, and I think there are other
errors of this sort in the book at hand.

Also, the Gieses take time late in the book to denounce firearms
as the *only* "pernicious" technology developed during the middle
ages. This appears quite witless, since they generally applaud
technological improvements which promoted social leavening, and
firearms meet that test easily ("God made men but Sam Colt made
them equal"). I can easily nominate a more "pernicious" medieval
technology: that of torture. Many are the museums in Europe
which lovingly preserve elaborate machines for inflicting
pain--something which we now regard as forensically worthless and
morally abhorrent.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating look at the einventive middle ages
Review: Obviously, you have to be interested in this period and the daily life of its people (rather than just kings and battles) to even consider it, so all I can say is that it is well written, and delivers a fascinating account of the high tech revolution of the Middle Ages.

FWIW, parts of the computer game "Age of Kings" were (loosely) based on this.

"If you like this sort of thing, then this is the sort of thing you will like" :)

Rating:
Summary: Don't Listen to "A reader from Seattle, WA USA"
Review: Ok, the Giles may got wrong some detail in this book, but it is a good book anyway. Most of the time we use things wich origin we don't know. Sometimes we think that what we are using is very modern and it actually comes from the middle ages.
This book is a very good book to know how they worked, what kind of machines they used, etc.

At the end of his review, A reader from Seattle writes something about torture. First he should read books like "Those terrible Middle Ages", "The Origins of Spanish Inquisition" and/or search for "the Myth of the Renaissance" on google.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent review of medieval technology
Review: Reacting to the perception that the medieval period was one of technological stagnation, Frances and Joseph Gies have written a fascinating review of innovation in that period. Starting with a review of ancient technology, the authors then go into innovations made during the so-called Dark ages. After that, the pace quickens, as the authors report on the later Middle Ages, and into the Renaissance.

I was impressed that the authors gave full credit for innovations that migrated from Asia to Europe, even attempting to discover the path that the innovation took. Overall this is an excellent review of medieval technology.

Rating:
Summary: A very generic reading
Review: This book is filled with interesting facts. If you are looking a very shallow introduction to medieval technology, this book can help you as a way to read a more advance study.

As allways, the Gies present a very organized book, dividing the inventions and technology according to the low or high middle ages, and making subdivisions for a better understanding of the different technologies (in clothing, in traveling, in science, in sailing, etc.)

All that being said, the book is a little boring at times. Some of the inventions are shown in drawings, but this is not the case in most examples, and to imagine the machine by description only turns the book into a complicated reading, a reading that bores you from time to time.