skygiants

I don't mind a certain degree of chattiness -- I really enjoyed, for example, The Invention of Anne Boleyn, which also very much felt like sitting with a friend in a bar while they drunkenly exclaimed about their paassions -- but I think where it starts to grate on me is where it feels like the author is assuming things about me-the-implied-reader that I find it irritating to have imposed on me. But I know that it works very well for some people, and indeed has clearly worked very well for this book since many people I know have read it!

But yeah, I think her framing is very smart and does a good job of showing the sort of inherent contradictions of the society and the various double standards that were held without automatically focusing on the most privileged individuals of society just because we have the most documentation about them -- and also is very good about demonstrating where the gaps in our knowledge are and the assumptions we can't make, which is something I always appreciate in a history book.