As other people have said, this felt more like a straightforward consumable piece of history meant for the masses than a specialized book - which in my case is quite a good thing! I did find this a little bit more accessible than some of the things that we have been reading over the past few weeks. I enjoyed the way that he used the history as contextualization for the person, rather than the person being contextualization for the history.
As always, I look at the women first, and I was interested in the possession of Dona Beatriz and how she sort of indirectly provided a catalyst for this particular movement. Something I've noticed about the books that we have read these past few weeks is that while women in history usually aren't as active (signing papers, waging wars, etc.) they are much the 'neck' of society - that is, they are the cause of many of the happenings in men's lives - whether they want to possess them, scorn them, worship them, it's all about the women. Or, maybe to walk a little further into this idea, it's about the IDEA of the woman in relation to the man - as some divine being, a daughter, a mother, a demon, etc.
So I find it interesting that we have so much focus on Dona Beatriz, who is somebody that history would ignore, and though it kind of puts her into that stereotypical position, she does have some sense of agency in that her story gets told.
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