Donald Ostrowski

This book brings together twenty pieces about people—whether real or composite—who lived in Europe roughly east of the Oder between about 900-1400. The contributors flesh out what we know of these figures' life stories (or possible ones) using informed speculation, drawing on evidence from archaeology, folklore, and various written sources. It's a valiant attempt to provide an accessible entry point for Anglophone readers who are generally even less familiar with eastern European medieval history than they are the history of western Europe during the same period, and given the constraints on biographical reconstruction imposed by the nature of the surviving source base. However, for me this experiment didn't quite work: neither fish nor fowl nor good red herring.… (more)

In any other time in history, this book would have been an invaluable resource. Even as it stands, the work that has gone into it has clearly been monumental. But there is one crushing downside: this information does not belong in a printed book-- which inevitably fills up three very large and heavy volumes.

This is information meant to be searched, and the format just doesn't lend itself to that purpose. The books are large, heavy, and physically awkward to work with. While I must admit that there's something kind of cool about owning an interlinear collation of the Primary Chronicle, there's not a lot of value beyond that.

What this work needs is an electronic edition, and in fact, it has one. These 2368 pages, priced at over $100, appear to be the product of an academic publishing system that's behind the times, demanding a printed return on its research investment, however inappropriate it may be to the task.

These books do have a certain coolness-value for the medieval Slavic bibliophile, but nothing more. Better to seek out their wonderful contents on-line where they belong.… (more)