I read his book Antiquity, and the other one about the Middle Ages. I liked reading it but I just want to know if it's good history or not. Apparently his books were best sellers.
The thing that got me asking is that he seems less than objective when portraying Germans, in no matter what era. He also puts a huge emphasis on the Jewish culture, and I was wondering if he gives it too much credit on the historical impact of Europe. It was cool to learn about Jewish history, but I'm curious as to how objective and factual his works are.
Wikipedia states that he had a "strained relationship" with other academics, but does not go into detail. So what's going on?
If you mean Inventing the Middle Ages: I am not a medievalist, but I found it an odd mix. I thought it was a very engaging exploration of how the personality and background of a historian can strongly influence his/her interpretation of an age. A commonplace, of course, but Cantor has some very vivid illustrations of it, and it's a lively read. That said, it's too personal to be a real survey- one reviewer noted Cantor paid less attention to who was actually important to be included, and more attention to the medieval historians he'd known. There are also odd digressions, some which I know are not correct ( Woodrow Wilson's bad treatment of a black army unit actually happened under Teddy Roosevelt)... There's way too much in the book that's NC's memoirs, generally. It's something you see sometimes from a writer who's famous enough to be able to ignore his editor's requests for concisely keeping to the point. I can well believe that he'd have a strained relationship with other academics , who'd request and expect him to do the same.