The Edge of the World: How the North Sea Made Us Who We Are - Hardcover

Pye, Michael

3.58

2,564 ratings by Goodreads

9780670922321: The Edge of the World: How the North Sea Made Us Who We Are

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670922323 ISBN 13: 9780670922321

Publisher: Viking, 2014

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Michael Pye's The Edge of the World is an epic adventure: from the Vikings to the Enlightenment, from barbaric outpost to global centre, it tells the amazing story of northern Europe's transformation by sea.

'An utterly beguiling journey into the dark ages of the north sea. A complete revelation . . . Pye writes like a dream. Magnificent' Jerry Brotton, author of A History of the World in Twelve Maps

Featured in New York Times: 100 Notable Books of 2015

This is a story of saints and spies, of fishermen and pirates, traders and marauders - and of how their wild and daring journeys across the North Sea built the world we know.

When the Roman Empire retreated, northern Europe was a barbarian outpost at the very edge of everything. A thousand years later, it was the heart of global empires and the home of science, art, enlightenment and money. We owe this transformation to the tides and storms of the North Sea.

The water was dangerous, but it was far easier than struggling over land; so it was the sea that brought people together. Boats carried food and raw materials, but also new ideas and information. The seafarers raided, ruined and killed, but they also settled and coupled. With them they brought new tastes and technologies - books, clothes, manners, paintings and machines.

In this dazzling historical adventure, we return to a time that is largely forgotten and watch as the modern world is born. We see the spread of money and how it paved the way for science. We see how plague terrorised even the rich and transformed daily life for the poor. We watch as the climate changed and coastlines shifted, people adapted and towns flourished. We see the arrival of the first politicians, artists, lawyers: citizens. From Viking raiders to Mongol hordes, Frisian fishermen to Hanseatic hustlers, travelling as far west as America and as far east as Byzantium, we see how the life and traffic of the seas changed everything.

Drawing on an astonishing breadth of learning and packed with human stories and revelations, this is the epic drama of how we came to be who we are.

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Review:

It's fascinating to understand [these] historical trends and ideas (Jeremy Corbyn)

An utterly beguiling journey into the dark ages of the north sea. A complete revelation . . . Pye writes like a dream. Magnificent (Jerry Brotton, author of 'A History of the World in Twelve Maps')

A closely-researched and fascinating characterisation of the richness of life and the underestimated interconnections of the peoples all around the medieval and early modern North Sea. A real page-turner (Chris Wickham, author of 'The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000')

Elegant writing and extraordinary scholarship . . . Miraculous (Hugh Aldersey-Williams, author of 'Periodic Tales' and 'Anatomies')

Splendid. A heady mix of social, economic, and intellectual history, written in an engaging style. It offers a counterpoint to the many studies of the Mediterranean, arguing for the importance of the North Sea. Exciting, fun, and informative (Michael Prestwich, Professor of History, Durham University)

Brilliant. Pye is a wonderful historian . . . bringing history to life like no one else. Who knew that the Irish invented punctuation? (Terry Jones)

A masterly storyteller (Vogue)

Pye has a great journalist's eye for a story and the telling anecdote as well as a great historian's ability to place it in the bigger picture. Here he fuses those talents in a hugely eclectic study of the very first stirrings of modernity in northern Europe

(Alexander McCall Smith)

Pye draws on a dizzying array of documentary and archaeological scholarship, which he works together in surprising ways . . . He advances on several fronts at once, following the overlapping currents of customary, religious and empirical ways of thinking. He writes about difficult concepts with vivid details and stories, often jump-cutting from exposition to drama like a film. It's complicated, but fun (Economist)

Hugely enjoyable. it is the measure of Pye's achievement that he can breathe life into the traders of seventh-century Frisia or the beguines of late-medieval Flanders as well as into his more celebrated subjects . . . Grey the waters of the North Sea may be; but Pye has successfully dyed them with a multitude of rich colours (Tom Holland Guardian)

About the Author:

Michael Pye has written eleven previous books, translated into eleven languages, including two British bestsellers and two New York Times 'Notable Books of the Year'. He took a First and various prizes in Modern History at Oxford, and was then for many years a highly successful journalist, columnist and broadcaster in London and New York. He now lives between London and rural Portugal.

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