I read plenty of history books and articles and one habit I took one early was to check where a historian was coming from. What's their background? ThI read plenty of history books and articles and one habit I took one early was to check where a historian was coming from. What's their background? Their political affiliation? It shouldn't matter in their writing, but it's naive to think it doesn't. Nixey is no exception. She's a journalist, not a trained historian and that shows in her writing (and also why this did not get 5 stars). It's not dry and historical, not overly factual, but rather with a sense of sensationalism.
Why is that bad? Because she is making a huge claim here. Let me be clear. I am an atheist, veering towards anti-theism. I abhor religion, because of all the nasty shit it has done, for the corrupt power-structure that it is, for the paedophilia, the destruction of people and pretty much anything else you can think of that you would normally dislike. So I'd love to chalk up the destruction of the Classical World to Christianity. I wouldn't put it past them. But Nixey tells a rather one-sided story here and that costs a start, especially when you claim to write history....more
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