The wars of three kingdoms
I found Kishlansky’s account of the Wars of Three Kingdoms very persuasive, probably the best thing in this book. When you write history you have a choice of the level you want to pitch the narrative, the levels being something like:
- superficial
- good summary
- summary with some detail
- lots of detail
- too much detail
As I explained in my review of Peter H. Wilson’s book about the Thirty Years War, Wilson definitely goes into ‘too much detail’, drowning the reader in specifics and failing to point out important turning points or patterns.
Kishlansky, by contrast, hits what, for me, was the perfect level of description, ‘incisive summary with some detail’.
For example, it is illuminating to be told that, put simply, the first three years of the war in England (1642-5) consisted mostly of smallish regional armies engaging in small skirmishes or sieges of local…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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