How long have I been hyping this book, totally unread by me, now? 6 months or something, anyway. Well, I got ahold of the Corvallis library's copy of it the other day.
It didn't last longer than a day.
350 pages, read essentially straight through. Damn fine writing. Tells the story of William Adams, a sailor upon whose life John Blackthorne of Shogun is modeled. The truth, it seems, is just as interesting as the fiction. Less involved in epic warfare than you might think, Adams was infact an advisor to Tokugawa Ieyasu, and participated in lots and lots of interesting trade stuff. In fact, after reading it, I'm inspired to go out and find a history of the East India Company somewhere. Much less a good biography of Ieyasu, who was most certainly The Man, whatever else his offspring might have been. Too, I'm inspired to find a good biography of Elizabeth of England, who just so happened to be The Woman, so far as I can tell.
History's good times, I say. Good times.
Especially, I should note, when well-written. And if there's one thing I want to throttle the collective membership of my profession for, it's writing books that nobody in their right minds would choose to read for being boring as hell. On that note, remind me to post a copy of my review of a certain biography of Simon de Montfort sometime. As a profession, historians are capable of some seriously dull writing, which is slightly odd when you consider that we're all well enough trained in writing, have the passion for the subject, you'd think we'd be able to inject some flair into the damn books, but no. The number of history books I can read in a single sitting can likely be counted on my fingers. Samurai William is one.
Which isn't to say there aren't flaws. I felt like it lacked for depth in a lot of places, though a lot of this has to do with working with fragmentary primary sources and the scope of the work. Too, it lacks for a lot of footnotes, which calls it into question somewhat, but the bibliography seems to me to be top-notch.
Go forth, O ye readers, and read this book. Anybody who's read Clavell's Shogun will like it, and there are worse introductory books to the period, certainly.
Posted by Dwip at December 19, 2003 1:51 PM