C.D. Gordon

This is a Barnes and Noble reprint thirty-three years after the University of Michigan published it. I suspect it was out of copyright and there may be a dirth of Attila the Hun books. I shouldn't complain: I was looking for a down and dirty summation of Attila the man and this is an exhaustive vacuuming up of anything remotely related to Attila. Its also the first time much of it has been translated into English. These are fragments as the author calls them, much of it copied a few hundred years after Attila from documents contemporaneous with Attila but which since have disappeared. The fragments are presented in italics and the author's running commentary and remarks in a font only slightly different in appearance. The new University of Michigan rerelease has further commentary by David Stone Potter which has likely added sixty or so pages to the book.

Only one chapter, of fifty-six pages, is about the Huns; the subtitle should have been the giveaway before I bought this book. I previously reviewed this book but Library Thing or I failed to save it properly. I can now find only one tab about a personally interesting passage about Attila:
p.96: He could not stand the sight of Zercon, a Scythian so called, but a Moor by race.
There was a Roman envoy's description of Attila's living quarters. The envoy was impressed by the woodwork of these semi-nomadic people. Perhaps Fritz Lang's set designer read that passage before the filming of "Die Niebelungen."
There is one really interesting passage that gives an insight into Attila or his times. The author is a Roman envoy sent to parlay with Attila. After a long wait by the envoy, Attila returns home from a day of traveling around his dominion. They sit down to dinner and three bound prisoners are brought in. Attila asks about them, their crimes are explained and Attila is asked to pass judgement on them. Instead he eats dinner and converses with the envoy. After dinner as he is about to retire and almost as an afterthought, Attila quickly disposes of the prisoners. Each is to be killed in a different way, the details now escaping me, but they share the characteristics of cruel ingenuity.
There are no illustrations or photos.… (más)

History books have come a long way in the last century. Not necessarily in terms of content -- there are many topics where there just hasn't been any new material discovered. I'm talking about in terms of style.

Modern history writers do a better job telling a compelling story; compared with the old style of simply reciting known facts. First published in 1960, The Age of Attila is a short, but painfully dense book to read. Every page seems to introduce one or more persons. Many of these aren't persons we are otherwise find familiar. The book is not really about Attila, but rather of the greater event of the collapse of the Roman Empire in the west, as well as duplicitous dealings of the Eastern Empire as it laid the foundation for another 9 centuries of survival. The changing scenery and constant barrage of bit players made the book hard to follow. At times Gordon would insert quoted primary source material without actually quoting it...the shifting perspective was quite annoying. The effect of Attila's campaign was alluded to throughout the book, but no attempt was made for a comprehensive treatment of the war against the Huns. This was a very tiresome book.… (más)