The Medieval Fortress

This is a great book. As others have mentioned, the photos are not fantastic. They are placed to demonstrate specific aspects of castle design during medieval times. However, the schematics are amazing. The book includes schematics of various castles throughout Europe and to a lesser extent the Middle East. However, detailed schematics are also included for well systems, latrines, security features to gates, gate houses and entryways, wall constructions over various time periods, and so forth. Whether used for historical purposes or inspiration for roll playing sessions, this book provides a lot of useful information.

On the whole, I found this book to quite informative with many detailed descriptions of medieval European castles and cities. On some specific castles the data can be fairly general. I found this to be most obvious on castles that I have been fortunate enough to visit in the past and purchase a guide brochure or booklet from which I naturally compared the data. I found the section on eastern European fortifications and their developement over the centuries to be very interesting as this was a subject I previously knew very little about. But I do have one major 'gripe' or dissatisfaction with the book. The detailed and extensive floor plans provided throughout the book all suffer from some serious 'under labelling'. For example, a specific castle floor plan might have 20 itemised (numbered) points or features of interest on it. But when one refers to the "legend' or 'key' to find out what a certain feature is, it becomes painfully obvious that not all 20 features are actually clarified or described in the key. This is a fault that is not isolated and is unfortunately prevalent on the vast majority of floor plans in the book. I'm not sure whether this problem is peculiar to the published edition I purchased or is in fact inherent throughout the whole published run. In any case it appears to be a large oversite in the 'quality control' department of the book's publication process. Other than these faults, I thought this book to be a good 'read'.

The written and visual content in this book is excellent. Engaging writing with an absolute wealth of diagrams, drawings, and photos. I have nothing critical to say in this regard.The paper quality, however, is a serious downside. Think newspaper but pulpier. I've handled pages with care because there is the real sense that I could rub the ink off if not careful. This also impacts the quality of the photos that have been included. It's common to see printing errors or ink bleeding in my copy, and this is unfortunate given the emphasis on visual examples accompanying the text.It's a great book that seriously deserves an upgrade in production materials, especially for the price.

Very informative book and will enjoy reading it!One thing that surprised me was the lack of more German castles being shown and discussed! With Germany having over 20-25,000 castles I was surprised at so few German castles and more French castles being discussed! Gary

Great condition as described. Fast arrival. Thanks.

The version I got had a red cover, different from the one shown here on amazon. As soon as I opened the book I was already amazed by the first details I saw. There are so many drawings and detials in this book it will make you leap for joy, especially if you are a technically minded drafter like I am. This book isn't just all about pictures though, there is so much more! Plenty of information to keep a guy chewing on this info for a long time. Just get it... you will not regret it.

If you want floor plans of many of Europe's great castles, this is the book for you. It has good illustrations on Castle architectural elements, and covers a little history on sieges and the advent of gunpowder. I would have liked more historical information, but that would have made this a much larger book.

If you are interested in castles, this is the book to have. It has many examples and explains castle construction and design in detail. A treasure trove of information. The photos are black and white, but support the text. If you are looking for pretty pictures, this isn't for you. This is a detailed text telling you everything you need to know about fortresses and castles.

i am immensely interested in castles and fortification so when i saw this book i bought it straight away. after being very impressed with how many different areas and castles etc were in the book, this soon gave way to disappointment with certain aspects... mainly the spelling!but by far the most disappointing is the quality of the photos, all are black and white which in itself wouldnt be too bad, but some of the photos are of such poor quality that they really shouldnt be in there. a book like this should really have had great quality colour photos to really show off the defensive qualities of each castle, fort etc.but other than that, a very informative book to make you want to explore the places in person.

This book is everything it promises!! It is a very detailed treatment of the various types of fortresses in Europe (and Africa) from the earliest days until around 1600. It is superbly illustrated with fantastically detailed drawings and maps of the various fortresses as well as lots of (B/W) pictures of the current state of many of the treated locations. You want to take this book and go sightseeing in all these faboulous ruins and castles all over Europe.

Great when dealing with it's main subject, medieval fortifications. A big plus for adding Eastern European fortification. Well illustrated. The problem is when dealing with societal organisation and the like, where the book looks somewhat dated. But not that bad when considering it is from 2004. Not a great book for a scholar, but definitely a good read for somebody interested in the middle ages.

A good reference book its only down fall is the quality of the images being bad quality black and white photographs. The information contained with in interesting and use full.

excellent text for studying the subject. It is for research into French castles and warfare, and useful for 3rd year dissertation my son is doing at university.