Book Review: BADASS! Just juvenile, or a fresh take on history?
I just recently got a book titled BADASS! A Relentless Onslaught of the Toughest Warlords, Vikings, Samurai, Pirates, Gunfighters, and Military Commanders to ever live by one Ben Thompson. Basically short essays on various historical figures ranging from Ramses the Great to Jonathan Netanyahu, covering their careers -- in extremely over-the-top language. Really, just read some of the Amazon reviews for more.
I'm really of two minds about this book. On one hand, the kindest word I can think of for the language used in it is 'juvenile'. Seriously, look at the book in a store and see for yourself. Sometimes it comes off as funny, but more often the nonstop parade of "dude" "badass" "wicked epic" and "totally kicked their wuss heinies" gets a bit, I'll say tiresome. It's defended as 'history that can be understood by a 14-year-old World of Warcraft player', if teenaged WpW players ever read books, that is. Really, sometimes I was left wondering if this tome slipped through from an alternate universe where Mike Judge's warning-disguised-as-a-comedy movie 'Idiocracy' was actually a documentary.
He also seems to lean towards the whole "Christianity put the Evil in Medieval" attitude which I find exceedingly tiresome.
But, those complaints aside -- he does cover some figures who rarely get mentioned in modern history, and he does so with a thankful minimum of PC whimpering about our evil-bad ancestors who didn't live like nice, proper, pansy left upper-middle-class Americans. Actually, he takes that attitude, beats it unconscious, douses it with gasoline and sets it ablaze. That alone makes up for a lot IMHO; you can agree or disagree as you wish, but I am sick, sick, SICK of "historians" who judge everything that ever occured as though the standards of the Politically Correct American Yuppie were some sort of universal truth, and the only reason our ancestors didn't play along was because they were Pure Evil (TM).
Thompson shows us these people as they were in their own times, for the most part. He doesn't play judgemental over things like war for the sake of war, slavery, piracy and robbery, or any of the other basic brutalities that have been part and parcel of the human experience for the past 5000+ years. Yes his language gets to be a bit much, man does it ever, but he presents the past without judging it from modern viewpoints.
In case you wonder at some of the people he covers, he hits both the (in)famous like Leonidas, William the Conqueror, and George S. Patton as well as lesser-knowns like Peter Francisco (the Virginia Hercules who aided the American Revolution by fighting with a five-foot long sword), Julia Agrippina (the Black Widow of Rome), and Bhanbagta Gurung (WW2 Gurkha serving with the Chindits who fought in Burma where he took a fortified hill from the Japanese Army in a battle where over 60 Japanese soldiers were slain, a dozen by Gurung himself with grenades, his bayonet, kukri, and a rock). Really, he does cover some amazing people.
So I guess I would recommend it, but you'd better know what you're letting yourself in for. I'd have to give it 3.5 cloven skulls out of five.
Best all!
I'm really of two minds about this book. On one hand, the kindest word I can think of for the language used in it is 'juvenile'. Seriously, look at the book in a store and see for yourself. Sometimes it comes off as funny, but more often the nonstop parade of "dude" "badass" "wicked epic" and "totally kicked their wuss heinies" gets a bit, I'll say tiresome. It's defended as 'history that can be understood by a 14-year-old World of Warcraft player', if teenaged WpW players ever read books, that is. Really, sometimes I was left wondering if this tome slipped through from an alternate universe where Mike Judge's warning-disguised-as-a-comedy movie 'Idiocracy' was actually a documentary.
He also seems to lean towards the whole "Christianity put the Evil in Medieval" attitude which I find exceedingly tiresome.
But, those complaints aside -- he does cover some figures who rarely get mentioned in modern history, and he does so with a thankful minimum of PC whimpering about our evil-bad ancestors who didn't live like nice, proper, pansy left upper-middle-class Americans. Actually, he takes that attitude, beats it unconscious, douses it with gasoline and sets it ablaze. That alone makes up for a lot IMHO; you can agree or disagree as you wish, but I am sick, sick, SICK of "historians" who judge everything that ever occured as though the standards of the Politically Correct American Yuppie were some sort of universal truth, and the only reason our ancestors didn't play along was because they were Pure Evil (TM).
Thompson shows us these people as they were in their own times, for the most part. He doesn't play judgemental over things like war for the sake of war, slavery, piracy and robbery, or any of the other basic brutalities that have been part and parcel of the human experience for the past 5000+ years. Yes his language gets to be a bit much, man does it ever, but he presents the past without judging it from modern viewpoints.
In case you wonder at some of the people he covers, he hits both the (in)famous like Leonidas, William the Conqueror, and George S. Patton as well as lesser-knowns like Peter Francisco (the Virginia Hercules who aided the American Revolution by fighting with a five-foot long sword), Julia Agrippina (the Black Widow of Rome), and Bhanbagta Gurung (WW2 Gurkha serving with the Chindits who fought in Burma where he took a fortified hill from the Japanese Army in a battle where over 60 Japanese soldiers were slain, a dozen by Gurung himself with grenades, his bayonet, kukri, and a rock). Really, he does cover some amazing people.
So I guess I would recommend it, but you'd better know what you're letting yourself in for. I'd have to give it 3.5 cloven skulls out of five.
Best all!