“The Origins of the Anglo Saxons” by Jean Manco [Book Review]

“The Origins of the Anglo-Saxons” by Jean Manco is how every book should be written: with preeminent scholarship and exquisite maps and supporting images. This masterpiece was compiled vis-à-vis Mary Hollingworth’s “The Medici Family” or Christopher De Hamel’s “Remarkable Manuscripts” and is a trend in publishing I hope to see continue. Another trend in publishing I hope to see continue are more books on the genetic history of the British Isles, and this book by Jean Manco, as well as her previous works, have definitely added to the corpus of knowledge within this most noble field.

STAR RATINGS:

“Origins of the Anglo Saxons” BOOK STATS:

• Published 2018
• 240 total pages
• 207 pages of text
• 10 chapters
• A whopping 137 illustrations
• One 3-page color picture inset
• One 4-page color picture inset
• 1 Notes section
• 1 Sources of Illustrations section
• 1 massive Bibliography
• 1 Index section
• Hardcover only

“Origins of the Anglo Saxons” BOOK REVIEW:

“The Origins of the Anglo-Saxons: Decoding the Ancestry of the English” by scholar Jean Manco is a welcomed contribution to the field of English genetic history. But it’s not just about England and it’s certainly not another brilliant areal DNA survey like Brian Sykes’ “Saxons, Vikings, and Celts.” Manco’s focus is on spotlighting the history and origins of that strand of genetic culture that differentiates Anglo-Saxon genes from everything else. In essence, it’s the story of how our Anglo-Saxon DNA found its way to England from the most ancient of sources.

I love how Jean Manco conceived of this book in that she explains what her exposition is about and then proceeds to build on that premise in a carefully constructed plan of facts overlaid with brilliant storytelling. “The Origins of the Anglo-Saxons” then, is literally about the deep origins of several strands of European DNA converging into a singular story.

Books on the Anglo-Saxons traditionally start with the arrival in post-Roman Britain of Germanic-speaking peoples and progress chronologically to that famous date of 1066. This book is different in structure and scope. We start with the vision that Anglo-Saxons had of themselves and their ancestors.

Manco 2018: 8

While Jean Manco’s work is a gem in the field of Anglo-Saxon history and its congruence to the modern-day notion of ‘English,’ there are certainly a few detractions that I have. First is the disrobing, if you will, of her scholarly voice wherein the tone of her writing becomes mutilated by the use of base and emotional vocabulary in Chapter Five. It’s as if her perspective has been sacrificed to politics in this chapter. I bring it up in this review as a point of contention only because it stands in glaring contrast to the rest of her writing which is manifestly brilliant. I get it everyone has their personal dislikes, but it shouldn’t effect their responsibility to scholarship in abandoning its cultivated phraseology and resorting to the use of thuggishly invective terms. Perhaps her editors are to blame.

The other detraction I have, and this is more like a missed opportunity than anything, is her listing –by and –thorpe as the only Scandinavian locative suffixes. There are literally at least 7 more. It would have been nice to let uninformed readers know what the extent of those are and provide a few examples of modern place names as supportive evidence, especially in a book so rich with charts and graphs.

“The Origins of the Anglo-Saxons” is a wonderful book to read on the subject of the English, who they are and from whence they came far back in time. The route that the Anglo-Saxons took to get to English shores is very much a tale of adventure and determination. It is also a story of opportunism and war, stretching back at least 5000 years. The presentation of this book is superb! It contains over 137 illustrations which include maps, tables, and pictures interspersed neatly and relevantly into the text. Nothing incites the imagination more than digesting paragraphs of text while also being able to contextualize that meaning in terms of supporting tables and images. It’s like having a magnificent wine paired with a perfectly-temperatured steak.

In writing this book review I learned of the passing of Jean Manco and the fact that this book was published posthumously in 2018. I would like to send my heartfelt condolences to her family and the larger publishing community with whom she worked. We have lost a brilliant mind and caring soul. I look forward to reading her other works with great enthusiasm.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

• Manco, Jean. 2018. The Origins of the Anglo-Saxons: Decoding the Ancestry of the English. New York: Thames & Hudson.
• ISBN-13: 978-0500051924
• Amazon Link.