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The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England, 1603-1689
Top of the pile
79
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
73/100Critics
86/100Scholars
Author:
Jonathan Healey
Publisher:
Knopf
Date:
April 11, 2023
A history of seventeenth-century England, a time of revolution when society was on fire and simultaneously forging the modern world.
What The Reviewers Say
Healey’s book is refreshing for its energetic writing, engaging wit and sound foundation in recent historical scholarship. It is light on analysis, but rich with anecdotes and explanations. Narrative sketches take precedence over probing of causes and consequences. Rather than advancing a new interpretation, Healey captures the vitality and turbulence of 17th-century England in an effective retelling, with many more players than the typical cast of kings and queens.
The point of Jonathan Healey’s new book...is to acknowledge all the complexities of the episode but still to see it as a real revolution of political thought—to recapture a lost moment when a radically democratic commonwealth seemed possible. Such an account, as Healey recognizes, confronts formidable difficulties.
Convincing.
In lucid, often mischievous prose, Healey outlines the ideas and events that sent the state into constitutional cartwheels after the death of Elizabeth I in 1603.
