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uthor William Manchester recently passed away which has prompted me to re-read some of his books. One favorite is A World Lit Only by Fire : The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance - Portrait of an Age. Manchester is often accused of being a "popular" historian, more focused on narrative than getting his facts straight. To these detractors I say, phooey. Unlike many history books which are the world's best cure for insomnia, A World Lit Only By Fire is highly readable, entertaining, and enlightening. Manchester paints a grimly realistic picture of what life was like in the middle ages including the stench, the violence, and the pervasive Roman Catholic Church. He shows the seeds and the blossoming of the Renaissance - the combination of technology (printing press), brilliant enlightened minds (such as Erasmus and DaVinci), and Papal funding that brought about a full scale shift in the consciousness of the Western world.

The book is filled with colorful anecdotes describing the......

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Approximate Pages: 2 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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