A Modern History From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon For the Use of Schools and Colleges

by John Lord

In preparing this History, I make no claim to original and profound investigations; but the arrangement, the style, and the sentiments, are my own. I have simply attempted to condense the great and varied subjects which are presented, so as to furnish a connected narrative of what is most vital in the history of the last three hundred years, avoiding both minute details and elaborate disquisitions. It has been my aim to write a book, which should be neither a chronological table nor a philosophical treatise, but a work adapted to the wants of young people in the various stages of education, and which, it is hoped, will also prove interesting to those of maturer age; who have not the leisure to read extensive works, and yet who wish to understand the connection of great events since the Protestant Reformation. Those characters, institutions, reforms, and agitations, which have had the greatest influence in advancing society, only have been described, and these not to the extent which will satisfy the learned or the curious. Dates and names, battles and sieges, have not been disregarded; but more attention has been given to those ideas and to those men by whose influence and agency great changes have taken place. In a work so limited, and yet so varied, marginal references to original authorities have not been deemed necessary; but a list of standard and accessible authors is furnished, at the close of each chapter, which the young student, seeking more minute information, can easily consult. A continuation of this History to the present time might seem desirable; but it would be difficult to condense the complicated events of the last thirty years into less than another volume. Instead of an unsatisfactory compend, especially of subjects concerning which there are great differences of opinion, and considerable warmth of feeling, useful tables of important events are furnished in the Appendix. I have only to add, that if I have succeeded in remedying, in some measure, the defects of those dry compendiums, which are used for want of living histories; if I have combined what is instructive with what is entertaining; and especially if I shall impress the common mind, even to a feeble degree, with those great moral truths which history ought to teach, I shall feel that my agreeable labor is not without its reward.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

566 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 22, 2006

About the author

John Lord was an American historian and lecturer. He graduated from Dartmouth and the Andover Theological Seminary.

Librarian note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

John^Lord

Reviews

[Oznasia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was apparently written with the younger reader in mind but please do not assume it is written down to that level. It does contain a lot of information and many of us, even older readers, would need to have a dictionary handy while reading it.

I came to this book after reading Tolstoy's 'War and Peace'. I realised that I had a very poor knowledge of European history and decided to improve it a little. I started with a biography of Napoleon and then moved onto this book. It does cover a lot of ground and perhaps in some areas does not go very deep. I see it as a starting point. Often Wikipedia has more on a person or incident that interested me but without this book perhaps I might not have known where to start with Wikipedia.

I now have a broader view and have some leads to what I might read next but I must say that the author does have biasses. The book is written very much from a Christian viewpoint. He is very critical of the French Revolution because of all the violence involved. But in his introduction to the chapter on Napoleon he says 'while war is so awful, and attended with all the evils of which we can conceive, or which it is the doom of man to suffer, yet warriors are not necessarily the enemies of mankind. They are the instruments of the Almighty to scourge a wicked world, or to bring, out of disaster and suffering, great and permanent blessings to the human race.' Reading on, he does seem to have a love-hate view of Napoleon but he doesn't like to admit that anything good came from the French Revolution because it was based on non-religious philosophies.

I read this as an ebook, downloaded for free from Project Gutenberg.