Whether it is the death of Socrates or George Orwell being shot by a sniper in the Spanish Civil War (I didn’t know about that!), if you love history, you already know you should read original sources and not just rely on someone’s interpretation of events. This book, Eyewitness to History, is pack-jammed with accounts of famous events and not so well-known points in history. It is just plain fun, I enjoyed almost every account. The accounts are not long, ranging from a couple paragraphs to, at most, 10 pages. Most are 1-2 pages long, easily read in less than 5-10 minutes. I read one or two every day and did not race through the book. The blurb on the front, “Wondrous, a found treasure” pretty well sums this book up. I spoilered some because of the graphic content. Lots of military events but plenty of other accounts to keep most folks interested.Here is an account of everyday life in the Middle Ages:A Boy Thief, 1324On Monday [in April, 1324] at the hour of vespers John, son of William de Burgh, a boy five years old, was in the house of Richard le Latthere and had taken a parcel of wool and placed it in his cap. Emma, the wife of Richard, chastising him, struck him with her right hand under his left ear so that he cried. On hearing this, Isabella, his mother, raised the hue and carried him thence. He lingered until the hour of curfew of the same day, when he died of the blow and not of any felony. Emma forthwith fled, but where she went or who received her the jurors knew not. Afterwards she surrendered herself to the prison at Newgate.The Spanish prove they are the equal of any when it comes to visiting horror on the New WorldSpanish Atrocities in the West Indies, c. 1513—20, Bartolome de Las CasasLas Casas, who became a Dominican missionary, was the first European to expose the oppression of the native races of Latin America He had himself taken apart in the conquest of Cuba, 1513(view spoiler)[The Spaniards with their Horses, their Speares and Lances, began to commit murders, and strange cruelties; they entred into Townes, Borowes, and Villages, sparing neither children nor old men, neither women with childe, neither them that lay in, but that they ripped their bellies, and cut them in peeces, as if they had beene opening of Lambes shut up in their fold. They laid wagers with such as with one thrust of a sword would paunch or bowell a man in the middest, or with one blow of a sword would most readily and most deliverly cut off his head, or that would best pierce his entrails at one stroake. They tooke the little soules by the heeles, ramping them from the mothers dugges, and crushed their heads against the clifts. Others they cast into the Rivers laughing and mocking, and when they tumbled into the water, they said, now shift for thy self such a ones corpes. They put others, together with their mothers and all that they met, to the edge of the sword. They made certain Gibbets long and low, in such sort, that the feete of the hanged on touched in a manner the ground, every one enough for thirteene, in honour and worship of our Saviour and his twelve Apostles (as they used to speake) and setting to fire, burned them all quicke that were fastened….the story goes on from here with more (hide spoiler)]
If you enjoy history (as I do), you'll love this book (as I did). If you don't enjoy history, this book will make you love it. This book is what history is all about: looking at the events that have shaped the world around us through the eyes of those who experienced it. I can't recommend this book enough! The only complaint I have about the book is that it focuses far too much on Western history since the Protestant Reformation. I'd love to see another editor (or the same) do the exact same thing as this book with a wider purview.
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This was a fascinating collection to dip in and out of in small doses. Reading too much of it in one sitting would have been a bit overwhelming and - certainly in the latter 20th century chapters - also somewhat depressing. Such is the perhaps unfortunate emphasis on military history and various violent episodes, particularly in the modern era, that it loses a star for my rating. There are many chapters here though also of a social history bent - including pieces from historic medical notes, notorious crimes, and also several great natural events such as Pliny the Younger on the eruption of Vesuvius, a 1724 solar eclipse, and Jack London on the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. There are many gripping and unique perspectives given throughout this book to much of human history. That said, there is precious little from African, Latin American, or Asian history (unless there is a colonial, pseudo-colonial or ex-colonial war going on...). But if it's battles, assassinations, plagues, historic firsts, executions, exploration and great acts of derring-do, advancements in technology, ritual practices, prisons, mutinies, revolutions, and sporting occasions you're after - then this is the book for you!Many excerpts stood out, making the collection well worth it if you can find a used copy online or happen upon one in a used bookshop. There were also a fair few less memorable pieces. With just a handful shy of 300 contributions, totaling 686 pages that is inevitable. Some of my personal favourites were: Plato on the death of Socrates; 3 different eye-witness reports of the sinking of the Titanic; Dinner with Atilla the Hun in about the year 450; Oskar Kokoschka with Austrian cavalry on the Eastern Front in 1915; Noel Monks' report from Guernica - just before AND after the German bombing - incredibly moving; Cecil Brown's ship-borne report from the Japanese air & submarine attack (read sinking) of HMS Prince of Wales & HMS Repulse, in Singapore just a few days after Pearl Harbor - shocking in its rapidity; and Charlotte Bronte inside the Great Exhibition's Crystal Palace.
—Paul
Excellent book to dip in and out (although i read it through) and get a feel for witness accounts of fascinating events throughout recorded history.Often we just get the victor's account of an event in our history books, so it was so refreshing to be able to read an everyday person's instead.It's quite a hefty book and well, not literally everything interested me (descriptions of battles, no matter who's doing the describing, tend to bore me to tears, so i skipped those), but it was still an otherwise quite engrossing volume.And although each piece was no more than a few pages, sometimes a little less than one, it was like reading a compendium of world history. I wanted to get on to the next account to find out what else people had witnessed.All in all, i'd recommend it to any history buffs who enjoy the occasional 'light' history book, one that you can put down and come back to again and again and learn something new and fascinating from.
—Ana
