Book Review: God's Fury, England's Fire by Michael Braddick

The problem with ebooks is you can't actually hold them. You can't tell beforehand how tiny the print is, you can't weigh them in your hands, you can't flip through them and check out what the writing style is like.

So sometimes you end up with a textbook.

I really wanted to learn more about the English Civil War, and the pickings were slim, so I ended up with God's Fury, England's Fire by Michael Braddick. The good news is that if I need to turn in a term paper I have a reliable source. The bad news is that this was a complete slog to read before bed every night. Nine out of ten hot dogs for using this book correctly, three out of ten hot dogs as a nighttime reader.

Again, while the book was not fun, it was indeed informative (with multiple footnotes on every page). This was so much drinking from a firehose that it's hard to pin down what exactly I learned (and how much fell straight out of my head). I think what really stood out to me, though, was how much of the English Civil War was about the definition of Protestantism. Episcopalianism, which replaced Catholicism, was thought of by many to be Catholicism with the added "bonus" of being dependent on your personal relationship with God. However, the stained glass windows stayed, the fancy churches stayed, the communion stayed. However, Presbyterianism took hold in Scotland, which said that the chosen people were foreordained, and therefore there was no need for fancy churches.

Having religious differences makes sense, but what really fascinates me is how much this meant to the people of England. The English people, largely poor and uneducated, cared enough about this distinction between religions to riot and attack Episcopalian churches, despite the fact that they were rioting against the church of their royalty. But the people really cared and flocked to Presbyterianism - really makes me wonder why, with the Presbyterian side winning the war, the religious wave crested (guess I'll have to wait for the sequel: God's Fury 2: Electric Boogaloo).

There's a lot to learn in this book, such as how newspapers began, how Oliver Cromwell factored into all of this, and how this nasty civil war business impacted good old fashioned witch hunting. But, as I said, there's A LOT to learn here, and it's pretty rough sailing for the casual reader.