I'm very interested in learning something about the Basque people. Unfortunately, I don't think I can make it through this book. It's a little too obsequious for my tastes. Kurlansky spends way too much time gushing about how cool and wonderful the Basque are. I like a little less cheerleading in my history books, thanks... ( )

País Vasco (Spain)/Pays Basque (France)/Basques

This book surprised me in some ways. I was interested in it specifically because my wife and I visited French Basqueland two years back. The book was very well written and very engaging, but I was a bit surprised that it was more or less a straight history of the Basque people from around the Middle Ages to the present. By "straight history" I mean it was mostly a traditional political history, with less cultural information than I was expecting, less about the mythology and social history. Also, much of the book from the post-World War II period onward was a description of the repressive measures of the Franco regime and its predecessors and about the radical and violent ETA nationalist terrorist group. Although all of that is of course important and central to the modern Basque story, the book made it seem as if there was little else going on in the Basque areas of Spain and France but that. So I didn't really feel that I got a very good picture of the modern Basque people.

Nevertheless, as I said, I did enjoy the book and feel that I've learned a lot that's interesting about the Basque people, their history and their culture.

It was also interesting to me that the book intersection so strongly with two other books I've read recently, for the section on the middle ages through the Renaissance helped provided some interesting perspective on things I'd recently read about in The Medici. And the detailed chapter on the Spanish Civil War, in which the Basques played an important role, mainly on the Loyalist side, resonated with the novel on the conflict, Another Hill, that I read a month or so. Funny how you can get some interesting congruence that way without even realizing you're doing it. ( )

Parts of The Basque History of the World are fascinating - the discussion of Basque origins and language, social customs, recipes, and other insights. Other parts of the book are confusing and a little tedious - the late 19thand early- to mid-20th century history, for example. Kurlansky tends not to follow a strict chronology. Instead he brings in parallel streams of history that overlap, making the story with such unfamiliar names more difficult to follow. I'm a little uncertain how unbiased he is when it comes to discussing the conflict between the Spanish government and groups like ETA; I'd like to hear both sides before judging. In spite of this, the book is well worth reading. ( )

This is a fascinating book about a mysterious people. The ancestral Basque homelands lie on the border between France and Spain, encompassing a bit of each country's territory. While the Basque are officially considered citizens of Spain, they consider themselves a separate group entirely. They are a mysterious group because anthropologists can't say exactly where they, or their native language, came from, only that both their physical traits and language have little in common with either the French or the Spanish. This book proffers a mixture of theory and recent scholarship to try and solve the mystery of the Basque: who are they, where did they come from, and how have they survived as a separate and unique people for so long? It's a very interesting read, and not at all dry or highly technical like many of these anthro-theory nonfiction books can be. ( )