Quote:
Originally Posted by corroonb
If you're looking for a good factual history book, then you're looking in the wrong place. Gibbon is a good writer and enjoyable to read but he is very opinionated and he lacked a lot of the sources modern historians have access to. He's very much an 'early' historian. I've only read the first two volumes so I can't really comment on the overall quality of the work.
I have the 8-volume Folio Society edition which should be quite cheap on eBay as they used to give them out for free to new members who ordered 4 books.
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Really?
I thought I read somewhere that he was the first historian to actually go back to original sources, and that as a result his work is the next best thing (to original sources--in contrast with earlier histories where people are reporting on people reporting what other people reported that yet other people said/did/saw).
Having said that, his opinionatedness does not surprise me... but is it really so bad as to negate the (supposed) value of the underlying research?
- Ahi