Descriptive note in Annual, 1906.
“The weakness of the book is to be found ... in its narrowness of treatment and in its lack of precision of detail. The book sins most of all by its lack of breadth and of historical proportion.” R. M. Johnston.
| + − | Am. Hist. R. 12: 377. Ja. ’07. 1080w. |
“The reader is never pulled up by the difficulty of understanding some obviously foreign construction, and is not often repelled by ugly English. The work of a learned Lutheran bishop of broad sympathies and massive erudition.”
| + + + | Ath. 1907, 1: 439. Ap. 13. 460w. |
“In all this Dr. Nielson gives evidence of wide reading and a sane historical judgment. The book is a mine of interesting matter collected from innumerable scattered memoirs, collections of documents, and other works. But though these are presented with a sufficient impartiality, little attempt is made to interpret their deeper significance. His narrative is overloaded with detail and obscured by digressions, which, however interesting in themselves, would have been better relegated to notes or appendices. Certain criticisms in detail remain to be made which may prove useful in the event of a new edition of the book.”
| + − | Lond. Times. 6: 9. Ja. 11, ’07. 2230w. |
“Timely in the best sense of the word.”
| + + | Nation. 84: 316. Ap. 4, ’07. 470w. |
“His two volumes make not only an interesting and careful narrative, they are also a significant and important contribution to the history of the past hundred years.” Christian Gauss.