The English Civil Wars Paperback – May 4, 2010

Yes, I know it's really English and British history, but my primary motivation was to learn American history, or what came right before American history. I'm trying to understand why the Founding Fathers of the USA were the way they were, and it occurred that the English civil wars may have been very influential on their desire for a decentralized government that allowed for freedom of conscience and worship, and that they may not have originated those ideas completely on their own.This to me was the best "first book" on the English Civil Wars I could have hoped to acquire and read.

I had to read each page twice in order to understand it. It is definitely for a person from England, and a history buff at that. Aside from all that, it is an excellent history of the civil wars.

I had very little knowledge of the English Civil Wars, so the book did give me a very high-level overview of many of the complex and intermingled issues that caused it. However, it feels to develop any of the personalities so I didn’t really have much of a connection to it was happening and to whom it was happening. My biggest complaint however; is that the book takes a tremendous amount of focus to read because it is completely full of comma splices, run on sentences, and the overuse of clauses. Here is a very common example of how the entire book is written: “Charles II, having learned the lesson of his alliance with the Presbyterians, had recently permitted only the network known as the Sealed Knot, which favored the uncompromising royalist and Anglican stance of Hyde, to conspire within England on his behalf.”

Having majored in English history at the University of Oklahoma, many, many years ago, I am always interested in a good book on some part of English History. This is definitely a good book. It is concise but full of information. It has a really good section at the end recommending other books that go into more detail on this Civil War.I am still a roundhead as they would have called me, and feel like Charles I, "that man of blood" as Oliver Cromwell called him, got everything he deserved when he got his neck chopped off.This book makes a good explanation of why the Puritan forces in the end, failed to make a republic last in England.This is definitely a good book to start with on understanding this unhappy time.

Brought to light a period of history I new really little about. Somewhat tedious.

Between 1640 and 1660 the British Isles erupted in terrible armed conflict. The conflicts-in many ways different wars in different places for different reasons-are ably documented in this overview.Blair Worden writes about the conflict from a higher view. He describes the social conditions that led to the war in such a way that one understands what the driving religious concerns were, and what things were such as the "Rump" parliament and how they came about.This book is a great book if one is starting out on studying the English Civil Wars.

Good books for my Classroom

Unlike many of the books I've read on the English civil war, Worsen focuses on the political and religious implications and results of a war.His text continues until the restoration under Charles II. This provides s different view and an interesting story of the many divisions that plagued the parliamentary adherents.