The book A World Lit Only by Fire by William Manchester is actually a very good book when you look at it more into depth. This book basically talks about the failure of medieval Europe and that "in the year 1500, after a thousand years of neglect, the roads built by the Romans were still the best on the continent". Several quotes similar to this show his liking for Rome and the civilization once built by them. The speaks about the many people of the time, the innovators and explorers who revolutionized the entire way the world was looked at, using hundreds of other characters the reconstruct the image of that time.
             Throughout the book he talks about several different times and problems of the medieval and post-Renaissance period. The three main issues that he addresses are the decline of civilization, the church being corrupt and the deeds committed by the sailors even though they knew what they were doing could be a waste of time or even leave to their death, explaining all they had to endure.
             The first chapter, entitled "The Medieval Mind" is basically bout the hardships the people had to face when life turned to manors and becoming a serf. People were constantly fighting, the war count was endless and the death count was even higher. Due to the sufficiency of agriculture and not much else, literacy also declined and disease increased and epidemics struck. The drainage was bad, which contributed disease and the death count. The farmers, or serfs, were constantly at work and had low quality tools to work with which made their life even harder, already trying to live off of scraps with a family to feed. Manchester however seemed to associate a lot of problems with the downfall of the Roman Empire.
             "The Shattering" is a chapter about the corruption of the church at that time, but although this chapter is mainly about it, the corruption is cited throughout his book. He states that the church officia...