Posted: Jul 17, 2017 7:49 pm
Weaver wrote:Macdoc wrote:Want to point some of those out...easy to criticize - harder to refute with evidence.
Certainly his sources from the Appendix are sterling.
His information on the Hanseatic League ....which was the most eye opening for me seems correctly based....I had no idea of the extent of their commercial empire.
The rest of salt monopolies and productions seem easily referenced.
I think it's well put together to cover so much history in a single volume and keep it interesting.
Yes, he has an extensive bibliography - but that doesn't mean it's accurate.
Here's one example - he goes on and on about Marco Polo's memoirs, and goes into a lot of detail about what Polo included and omitted - and states very affirmatively that Polo never mentioned the use of paper money in his memoirs. But this isn't true - Polo did talk about paper money, and about specific villages that used or didn't use it.
He improperly conflates many sorts of salts; while mostly talking about "salt" as it's commonly understood, i.e. NaCl, he also uses "salt" and "salts" for potassium nitrate and other salts - without being particularly definitive that they are completely different, in not only chemical forumlae, but in manufacture, production, and application - as well as impact through history. Maybe just really crappy, sloppy writing (which describes a lot of this incredibly tiresome and repetitive book) but also not especially honest for something purporting to be totally accurate.
More chemistry errors - he says baking soda is sodium carbonate (it's sodium bicarbonate). He says phosgene and mustard gas are the same thing. Uh, no - aren't now, and never have been. He says light bulbs contain magnesium salts - not since we stopped using flash powders. Natron, used in Egyptian mummification, isn't simply "a salt" - it is a mix of sodium bicarbonate, sodium sulfate, sodium carbonate, and sodium chloride - and sodium bicarbonate ain't a salt, it's a base.
He states that apostrophes aren't used in the French language. D'accord, whatever. C'est la vie
And speaking of France, he tries to make it seem like the French salt tax, the Gabelle, led to the French Revolution. Pretty long simmering rage for a tax which first came about in the 1200s.
There are others - it's been almost a decade and a half since I read this, but while I too was impressed at first, the more I thought about it the less impressed I was, particularly in light of historical accuracy.
A long bibliography doesn't mean that it has "sterling" accuracy - just that he can write long lists of things.