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Customer Reviews (2)

Full of Facts but boring
My interest in stamp collecting led me to want to know more about Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Benelux nations. There didn't seem to be many choices and I wound up with this book.After struggling through about 80-100 pages or so, I finally gave up.The book is chock full of facts. The only trouble is that they are spit out at you one after another more or less chronologically with little or no interpretation. It just seemed to be one long litany of one person with an unpronouncable name killing off someone equally forgettable. I suppose to someone already familiar with the subject this stuff might be gripping. As a novice to the subject, I found it boring in the extreme.

I have to admire the author's scholorship. He's brought together a very complete history from the earliest times, with an amazing amount of detail of events prior to about 1300 AD where I stopped reading and presumably he continues in the same vein up to the present day. I just wish he'd tried more to put things in perspective, to complement *what* happened *when* with a bit more of *why* it happened and how it relates to the present.

The book has several maps at the beginning. They are too small (for my eyes anyway) and would have been much more meaningful to me if they had also shown the present-day borders of the countries (again, showing how the history relates to the present!) Ideally, it would be nice if it were done with clear overlays and in color but perhaps that is asking too much of a book these days.

Another simple improvement would have been a pronounciation guide or, better, give the pronounciation of each name the first time it is used.It would also be helpful if the author had included some genealogy charts so one could see how the players were connected. I admit, I got lost fast in this sea of battling strangers.

Having given up on the history of the low countries, this morning I began reading "The Czechs and the Lands of the Bohemian Crown" by Hugh Agnew. (Also prompted by my stamp collecting interest.) Unlike the lowlands, I found myself reading this book with pleasure and zipping right along. If nothing else, it shows I'm not negative about all history books, just this one.

I don't necessarily mean to put anyone off from "A History of the Low Countires", just be aware that it is a scholarly work and not something the average person will read for pleasure.

A complex history presented clearly with clarity and a light touch
I have just finished this delightful book, "The Low Countries".I am not an academic, but rather a former international banker who lived in the proximity of the Low Countries (3 years in Germany and a year in London) before spending 10 years in the Far East, during which time I occasionally also had Dutch bosses and colleagues.I have long been intrigued but the differences in personalities of Cologne and Frankfurt where I lived and The Netherlands and Belgium so close by, yet found no history books that really helped me get my arms around their complex, interconnected histories.This book not only did this, but with an occasional sly humor that I came to look for with delight. ... Read more

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This Elibron Classics book is a facsimile reprint of a 1902 edition by the Author, London. ... Read more

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This Elibron Classics book is a facsimile reprint of a 1909 edition by the Author, London. ... Read more

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Discover the secrets of Bruges, Belgium's rise to 15thcentury wealth and splendor, its decline to a poverty strickenprovincial town, and its remarkable rebirth as one of Europe's mostauthentic and perfectly preserved historic cities - a center of greatart and culture. Visit its history with detailed walks at the end ofmost chapters. ... Read more

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The history of Freemasonry in Belgium reflects the many influences on what is now Belgium from the neighbouring states. ... Read more

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This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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Publisher: London, T. FisherSubjects: Leopold I, King of the Belgians, 1790-1865Notes: This is an OCR reprint. There may be numerous typos or missing text. There are no illustrations or indexes.When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. You can also preview the book there. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Good Book in a Shabby Edition
The only other one of Count Corti's books that I had read before this was his biography of Elizabeth of Austria, which was so good, it left me eager to read more.

`Leopold of Belgium' cannot, however, quite be called a biography. Such a thing would have been difficult at the time, since as Corti points out in the introduction, "The present work itself does not purport to do more than make a contribution to such a biography; as any attempt to write the King's life without access to the carefully guarded, and only partially published, papers in the possession of the English Royal House is bound to succeed only incompletely".

Still, he did a pretty good job with whatever was available in 1923, even if the result is more a political study than a biography. Leopold's personal life is given only the bare minimum of attention. His first marriage, to Princess Charlotte of Wales, is glossed over in a page or two, and his second marriage is only given real analysis at the time of his second wife's death - and then again, only briefly. The death in infancy of his first son and the birth of a second son (the future Leopold II) are mentioned, but Leopold's daughter Charlotte emerges out of nowhere at the time of her marriage, and his second son, the Count of Flanders (father of Albert of Belgium) isn't mentioned at all.

Nonetheless, if you're interested in this fascinating combination of crude ambition and exquisitely subtle diplomatic skill, it's worth a read, even though this edition is full of typos, and footnotes in the middle of the text. The Publication Data at the front explained this: it was scanned, and not properly proofread (it mentions that this was done by software). But given that I couldn't find a single copy of the 1923 English edition on any internet book site, it's not worth complaining - at least it's available.

If you want a more recent study (though one that's still not a biography), I recommend Richard Sotnick's 2008 The Coburg Conspiracy: Royal Plots and Manoeuvres. Joanna Richardson's MY DEAREST UNCLE, A LIFE OF LEOPOLD, FIRST KING OF THE BELGIANS and Theo Aronson's Defiant Dynasty: The Coburgs of Belgium are also well worth reading. ... Read more

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Publisher: London G. VirtueSubjects: Netherlands -- Description and travelNetherlands -- HistoryBelgium -- Description and travelBelgium -- HistoryNotes: This is an OCR reprint. There may be numerous typos or missing text. There are no illustrations or indexes.When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. You can also preview the book there. ... Read more

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Originally published in 1902-09. This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies.All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume. ... Read more

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Since man started to settle and produce goods and services using tools instead of only hands, investment in equipment and in buildings used for storage and production became a part of economic life. Economists have used different terms to designate the process of acquiring or constructing capital goods like equipment, buildings and infrastructural outlays. Keynes for instance preferred to speak of investment, while Kuznets employed the term capital formation. To these terms one can add the words net or gross, depending on whether one talks about only new investment or capital formation, or both new investment and the allowances made to replace existing capital goods, and fixed, if one wants to focus on capital goods and leave out investment in stocks.

In order to avoid possible confusion with financial investment and financial capital, it is better to speak of asset formation, which is the term that is generally used in this study. The scope of the present study is the reconstruction of gross fixed asset formation in Belgium by the private sector for the period 1900-1953 (Initially the reconstruction of gross fixed asset formation was limited to the period 1910-53. For the present study the reconstruction was extended to the period 1900-09) and an initial global analysis of the outcomes and their role in the long-term performance of the Belgian economy (1910-95). A secondary aim is the reconstruction of the value of changes in stocks or inventories for the private sector for the period 1900-53. ... Read more

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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free.This is an OCR edition with typos.Excerpt from book:CHAPTER IIFROM SAINT AMAND TO CHARLEMAGNEPursuing their conquests in Gaul, the Prankish kings soon abandoned Clodion's capital and established themselves in Paris. Clovis and his successors, surrounded by their warriors, could not resist the Gallo-Roman influences to which they were subjected. They gave their name to the country they conquered, but adopted its customs and paid but scant attention to their old companions left behind as settlers on the banks of the Scheldt. With the Belgo-Roman population, Christianity had been swept from Northern Belgium, and it took the Church two centuries, after the baptism of Clovis (496), to reconquer the ground she had lost.This long delay is easily accounted for. The conversion of Clovis and of his followers, which affected so deeply the course of French history, scarcely reacted on the creeds and customs of the Pagan Prankish tribes established in the northern plain. The organization of the Church, which had had no time to consolidate itself, had been utterly shattered by the invasions. Between the fourth and the seventh centuries, the shadow of Paganism spread again across the land in Northern Belgium as in Britain, and when St. Amand arrived in Flanders, he found the Franks as little prepared to receive him as the Saxons had been, a few years before, to receive Augustine.In Northern Belgium, as in Britain, the work of rechristianization had to be undertaken from outside. The regular bishops, confined to their towns, could not possibly cope with it. Their influence was limited to a small area, and their frequent change of residence suggests that their situation was rather precarious. During the sixth century, the bishops of Tongres established themselves at Maestricht, those of Tournai at Noyon, and those of Arras at Cambra... ... Read more

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General Books publication date: 2009Original publication date: 1844Original Publisher: T. and W. BooneSubjects: Waterloo, Battle of, Waterloo, Belgium, 1815Biography ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more