The sphere of books published in 2017 a work tremendously necessary carried out by Andoni Garrido Fernández. It is very possible that that name does not sound familiar to you, but if we tell you that he is the person behind the immense work that the YouTube channel “But that is another story” entails, it will surely sound much more familiar to you. If not, subscribe damn it! So you will be part of the whopping 120,000 subscribers he has. Its objective is very simple: to tell the history of humanity in an entertaining and bearable way. This same attitude carries over to his book, empires and swords.
Data sheet:
- Title: Empires and blows: a history of Antiquity so as not to bore you.
- Author: Andoni Garrido Fernandez.
- Genre: Ancient History.
- Number of Pages: 504 pages.
- ISBN: 9788491641278.
- Year: 2017.
- Read its first pages and index.
What we think in Archives of History
When we take the book in our hands we already see a total declaration of intentions. The soft, paperback cover is decorated with a curious illustration of a hoplite on crutches. It is clear that the message you are sending to the potential buyer is that of a story told from a pleasant, humorous and very close point of view. This is quite interesting, since it achieves something that many historians have not achieved: reaching the public in an entertaining way. If it is true that perhaps some illustrations are missing inside, as well as a few maps, which due to editorial problems could not be finally published. Perhaps something we can criticize the book for is that lacks critical apparatusbut taking into account the audience for which it is intended and its objective, it is a small flaw that we can ignore.
Going into the content of the book itself, we can say that it is a wonderful synthesis of the different historical periods of antiquity. You have to praise above all the Middle East part since in Spanish, this theme is a real wasteland with enormous difficulty to get started in it, since there is practically nothing. However, the book covers it carefully enough to give you a general idea of what the world was like in the first sedentary civilizations on this side of the planet.
Another great point in the execution of the book is that it is full of anecdotes that make reading easier, but they themselves have a strong value to understand society or even the emergence of historiography. For example, in one of them he tells us who was the pharaoh who ruled for the longest years, which serves to tell us that life expectancy in Egypt was not very high. In another, he explains the rise of the annalswhich helps to understand the appearance of the Roman historiographical world.
Finally, and as an appendix, the book tells us about other times before the human being himself had populated the earth, such as the Precambrian.
Basically, it could be said that the book is a compendium of what we can find on its YouTube channel until the end of the Western Roman Empire, although structured, ordered, and adapted to book format.
So do we recommend it?
Of course yes. If you’re a fan of history it might be a little short on content, but if on the other hand you’re just starting out in the Ancient World, it serves perfectly as a sort of primer to get you started. Points strengths of the book are the enormous sympathy that it transmits and its enormous charisma. The imprint of an audiovisual rather than literary language is strongly noticeable, which is appreciated, because it gives it a relaxed touch that makes it very entertaining to read, practically the pages fall devoured in moments thanks to the brilliant work that Andoni Garrido has carried out .
It is a great outreach work, and from Archivos de la Historia we are very grateful to the author for his work. It is a pity that from the historical discipline itself, the academics themselves do not make any effort to bring the history of humanity to ordinary mortals.
Finally, we also recommend the YouTube channel on cinema that the author himself has “Script Holes” where he dissects the movie scripts looking for errors in their execution.