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On Charles V

Review products

Parker, Geoffrey. Emperor: A New Life of Charles V. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019. Pp. 760 + 40 color illus., 5 maps, 3 figs.
Schilling, Heinz. Karl V. Der Kaiser, dem die Welt zerbrach. Biographie. Munich: C. H. Beck, 2020. Pp. 457 + 40 illus., 3 maps.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 March 2022

James D. Tracy
James D. Tracy*
Affiliation:
Department of History (Emeritus), University of Minnesota, Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, USA Email: tracy001@umn.edu
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Extract

Biographies of great men are often undertaken by amateurs. Professional historians prefer to focus on collective institutions that are thought to be the theater of history properly understood. Geoffrey Parker has been a key figure in developing the “military revolution” hypothesis that has guided a good deal of recent work in early modern military history; he understands the perils of a biography better than most. But, having spent years amid the stacks of paperwork left by Spanish-Habsburg rulers, he also knows that the personal decisions of a Charles V (1500–58) made a difference. Charles signed more than 100,000 state documents, many of them with annotations in a distinctive hand that (one might say) only a mother could love.

Type
Book Review: Review Essay
Information
Austrian History Yearbook , Volume 53 , May 2022 , pp. 197 - 201
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota

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