RaveThe Wall Street JournaKing and Emperor: A New Life of Charlemagne is not simply a biography: Ms. Nelson simultaneously presents the evidence from which she reconstructs the man and his times, guiding the reader through the complexities of medieval source criticism, offering lessons on how to read Carolingian poetry and showing her hand at every crucial moment of judgment. Doing history is always more engaging than reading history, and by involving the reader in the process, King and Emperor takes on the compelling suspense of good detective work as well as good history ... Janet Nelson comes as close as one can to approaching this extraordinary man.
Robin Lane Fox
PositiveThe Wall Street Journal“Mr. Fox succeeds in offering us a figure whose inner and outer struggles, whose strengths and weaknesses, do somehow reach across the centuries and touch something profoundly human.”
