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This is another cheap Kindle version of a public domain book, this time offered by The Pergamum Collection (I got it for free some time ago). Originally written in 1894 as the first volume of an English guide to German history, it covers from Roman times to the end of the Hohenstaufen dynasty in the mid-13th century.

While the difference in publishers is evident in the fact that the nature of OCR-related problems is different, the fact is that they are present, and show that no real proofing of the document was done. From several occurrences of “Charles the Pat” before finally showing up properly as “Charles the Fat” the last time he is named, to “Emperor Frederick II.,” showing up as “Emperor Frederick IL,” in the introduction, the book has a large collection of minor problems that would have been fixed with a pair of attentive eyes. Overall, though, the incidence of problems is probably less than the average for Lecturable, so I marginally recommend Pergamum over them.

The book itself is quite good. It is of course dated, and mostly concerned with the affairs of kings and rebellions (not a problem to me), though it does have chapters on society and literature at the end, and is written with a great deal of enthusiasm for the subject. I’ve long wanted some sort of answers as to how the post-Carolingian Kingdom of the East Franks turned into the disunited Holy Roman Empire of the Renaissance, and this book does talk about the beginning of the process, with the rise of cities and local leagues, as the administration of the Empire comes apart in the face of a Papacy determined to keep the Hohenstaufens from uniting Italy around the Papal territories.