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The Thirty Years War cover art

The Thirty Years War

By: C. V. Wedgwood
Narrated by: Charlton Griffin
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Summary

Initially, the Thirty Years War was precipitated in 1618 by religious conflicts between Protestants and Catholics in the Holy Roman Empire. But the conflict soon spread beyond religion to encompass the internal politics and balance of power within the Empire, and then later to the other European powers. By the end, it became simply a dynastic struggle between Bourbon France and Habsburg Spain. And almost all of it was fought out in Germany. After 30 years of conflict, entire regions of Germany and Bohemia were depopulated and destroyed by marching armies, fire, famine, and disease. It bankrupted most of the participants while leaving thousands of German villages, towns, and even cities in smoldering ruin.

Because of the political and geographical complexity of the early 17th century, an understanding of The Thirty Years War can be difficult to grasp in the beginning. Listeners will be rewarded by patience. As an aid to comprehension, we recommend the online Wikipedia article "The Thirty Years War" for maps and overviews of the geography, principle leaders, and major battles.

Total running time: 19 hours and 48 minutes. Narrator: Charlton Griffin.

©1938 Estate of C. V. Wedgwood (P)2012 Audio Connoisseur
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: History

What listeners say about The Thirty Years War

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    5 out of 5 stars

More poetry than history

The terrible saga of the 30 years war is recounted here like an epic poem. So many places, people, twists & turns. To get the most out of this history you probably need to know all about the war in the first place. For many listeners, myself included, the wonderful stentorian phrasing and pronunciation of Charlton Griffith is like a tragic symphony, washing over you, leaving an overall impression but no specific facts. Indeed I think I would have learnt more specific facts about the 30 years war by studying wikipedia for half an hour. Yet this is a great work of history. Its not so much that it is too detailed, its just that the events themselves are so numerous and complicated. Highly recommended but not for everyone.

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8 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

CV Wedgwood's classic history

I struggled with the narration, to be honest. Charlton Griffin is well-known, an award-winning narrator. At first I suspected that Mr Griffin was in fact a robot, since his words are perfectly formed but he doesn't give any indication of understanding what he's reading. I don't expect the narrator to be an expert in the subject, of course, but I do expect him to present naturally and sensitively, and allow the text to mean something. I got the hang of it, and am getting through it, but it's heavy going - not helped by a fair amount of mispronunciation; the problem here is not with non-English words and names, which are well done on the whole, but with strange forms of English words - sometimes the pronunciation is American, which is OK, but sometimes it appears that Mr Griffin simply hasn't come across this word before. Overall, he does a business-like job of getting through his task, rather than conveying Ms Wedgwood's meaning clearly. Other than that, this is the only audio version available, and it's not bad.

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5 people found this helpful

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The best book and a good narrator

First of all, Wedgwood is incredible. The book is not only incredibly accessible and interesting, but also deeply analytical and informative. The best I've read/listened to on the subject.

The narrator has been the subject of criticism in the comments. I don't feel this is entirely deserved. He is very dramatic which at first can be a touch jarring, however, once you are a few hours in to it, his reading lends an excellent feel to the gravity of certain situations. Particularly once the war really picks up steam.

I can not recommend this highly enough.

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4 people found this helpful

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An excellent history with a truly appalling narra

I have this book in hardcopy and have delved through it before. The audiobook is for situations when I need to listen to something whilst otherwise busy with my hands. It is just as well I have the book or it would have taken me chapters and chapters to figure out what Prog was. Why on earth they chose a US narrator only heaven knows. I usually avoid US narrators like the plague except for books like Moby Dick etc which naturally should be read by an American voice. But in this case I cannot imagine what they were thinking

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3 people found this helpful

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Outstanding

I thoroughly enjoyed this one!
It is a bit of a bombardment of information, but I knew next to nothing of this time period and now feel I have a much better grasp of it, but more importantly, I find I'm now much more interested in it!

If you enjoy history and have an interest in war and all of its effects on country and population, I 100% recommend this book!

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    5 out of 5 stars

Good Old-fashioned Narrative History

CV Wedgwood’s Thirty Years War is old school history: clear, dispassionate, balanced, letting the facts speak for themselves, delivered with a dry wit and thumbnail sketches that help to nail the characters for the listener (“he was clever enough to be unhappy, but not clever enough to be successful”, etc.)

The reader is well suited to the text. Some of the European place name pronunciations are different to those I’m used to in the U.K., but that’s the only minor issue I had.

Thoroughly recommended.

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If you can adjust to the accent, a good reading.

A long, but interesting history read by Charlton Griffin...who takes a little bit of adjusting to, as his delivery is a sort of over-styled Received Pronunciation (...but with some egregious americanisms like his pronunciation of rout and route...) that can seem a bit odd at first
That said, once you do adjust, he provides a better performance than many versions of similar histories - just the right amount of emphasis and drama to avoid it being bland recitation but not overdoing it either.

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    5 out of 5 stars

It’s Prague not Prog FFS!!!

A well written, if dry and detailed, book which I suspect had a bit more of a dry humour than the narrator managed to get across. Whilst the narrator has a pleasant tone, some of his pronunciations are a little strange. You may think this is not much of an issue but constant repetition of mispronunciations - bizarrely mixed with the same word being correctly pronounced sometimes almost in the same sentence - had me shouting at my iPad (see title).

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Light out of Darkness

A great history of a very confusing topic and the constant chopping and changing of sides etc. Made sense to me finally. Would have liked more on the military aspects ie tactics, battle plans etc. Instead what we get is that someone won and that's it.

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Too much detail presented too quickly.

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

No.

Who might you have cast as narrator instead of Charlton Griffin?

Anyone who doesn't pronounce 'often' as 'orfen'. There were several other instances of pronunciation I found rather strange. The reading was far too lackadaisical, as if he could only just be bothered to read it.

Any additional comments?

It was just too hard to follow in audio format. Too many names and too much information thrown at the listener. It would be far better as a book.

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