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    Emperor: A New Life of Charles V
    Emperor: A New Life of Charles V
    Emperor: A New Life of Charles V
    Audiobook26 hours

    Emperor: A New Life of Charles V

    Written by Geoffrey Parker

    Narrated by Nigel Patterson

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    The life of Emperor Charles V (1500-1558), ruler of Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, and much of Italy and Central and South America, has long intrigued biographers. But the elusive nature of the man (despite an abundance of documentation), his relentless travel and the control of his own image, together with the complexity of governing the world's first transatlantic empire, complicate the task.

    Geoffrey Parker, one of the world's leading historians of early modern Europe, has examined the surviving written sources in Dutch, French, German, Italian, Latin, and Spanish, as well as visual and material evidence. He explores the crucial decisions that created and preserved this vast empire, analyzes Charles's achievements within the context of both personal and structural factors, and scrutinizes the intimate details of the ruler's life for clues to his character and inclinations. The result is a unique biography that interrogates every dimension of Charles's reign and views the world through the emperor's own eyes.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateJun 11, 2019
    ISBN9781977388384

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    Reviews for Emperor

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    • 5/5
      About the only reason why I don't give this work top marks is that, despite the wealth of information of information that we have on the man, I'm not sure that the author quite achieved his ends. That is, to establish whether Charles' empire was an essentially impossible project, or whether Charles should essentially be regarded as being undone by his own mistakes. In the end, Parker is concludes that success is a relative condition and that, while this empire was something of a fluke of circumstance, Charles made more good decisions than bad, while probably having more than his share of good luck.A big part of the issue is that the game changed very rapidly over the course of Charles' active years of power, in that to contest France in Italy, defend the traditional lands of what was Burgundy, hold back the Ottoman empire, and contain Protestantism, were simply too factors in play. Not to mention when you add the complexities of military and fiscal revolutions to the mix. The end result being that, despite the failures of policy and character, the author ends this work with a great deal of respect for the man.Realistically speaking, this should not be the first book you read on Charles. Despite being rather old-school history, you might be better of reading "Four Princes" by John Julius Norwich, than try Parker's work.