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The Making of the Middle Ages

R.W. Southern · back to the book

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24 books with the same feel

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Medieval HistoryHistoryNonfictionDense Prose
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Medieval History: The Life and Death of a Civilization

Norman F. Cantor · 584 pages

Studies on the ideas and institutions of Western civilization from 200 A.D. to 1500 A.D.

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The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time

John Kelly · 384 pages

Chronicles the Great Plague that devastated Asia and Europe in the fourteenth century, documenting the experiences of people who lived during its height while describing the decline of moral boundaries that also marked the period.

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The Year 1000: What Life Was Like at the Turn of the First Millennium

Robert Lacey, Danny Danziger · 240 pages

Presents what life was like in the year 1000 for an Englishman.

Medieval HistoryHistoryNonfictionDense Prose
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The Crusades Through Arab Eyes

Amin Maalouf · 293 pages

Retraces two critical centuries of Middle Eastern history, presents an intriguing chronicle of the Crusades, and offers insights into the forces that shape Arab and Islamic consciousness today.

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A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance: Portrait of an Age

William Manchester · 318 pages

William Manchester's A World Lit Only by Fire is the preeminent popular history of civilization's rebirth after the Dark Ages.

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Revelations of the Medieval World

Georges Duby, Philippe Aries · 672 pages

The second volume of "A History of Private Life" is a treasure trove of rich and colorful detail culled from an astounding variety of sources. This absorbing "secret epic" constructs a vivid picture of peasant and patrician life in the eleventh to fifteenth centuries.

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The Age of Faith

Will Durant · 1,196 pages

The Story of Civilization, Volume A history of medieval civilization—Christian, Islamic, and Judaic—from Constantine to A.D. 325-1300. This is the fourth volume of the classic, Pulitzer Prize-winning series.

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A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

Barbara W. Tuchman · 704 pages

Amazon.com Review In this sweeping historical narrative, Barbara Tuchman writes of the cataclysmic 14th century, when the energies of medieval Europe were devoted to fighting internecine wars and warding off the plague. Some medieval thinkers viewed these disasters as divine punishment for mortal wrongs; others, more practically, viewed them as opportunities to accumulate wealth and power. One

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Alfred the Great: Asser's Life of King Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources

Asser, Alfred the Great · 368 pages

Asser's Life of King Alfred, written in 893, is a revealing account of one of the greatest of medieval kings. Composed by a monk of St David's in Wales who became Bishop of Sherborne in Alfred's service and worked with him in his efforts to revive religion and learning in his kingdom, this life is among the earliest surviving royal biographies. It is an admiring account of King Alfred's life, writ

Medieval HistoryHistoryNonfictionClassics
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The History of the Franks

Gregory of Tours · 164 pages

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Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century

John Boswell · 436 pages

From back cover: Boswell's highly acclaimed study of the history of attitudes toward homosexuality in the Christian West challenges received opinion and our own preconceptions about the Church's past relationship to its gay members, among whom were priests, bishops and even canonized saints. The historical breadth of Boswell's research (from the Greeks to Aquinas) and the variety of sources consul

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Chronicles

Jean Froissart · 496 pages

One of the greatest contemporary records of fourteenth-century England and France Depicting the great age of Anglo-French rivalry from the deposition of Edward II to the downfall of Richard II, Froissart powerfully portrays the deeds of knights in battle at Sluys, Crecy, Calais and Poitiers during the Hundred Years War. Yet they are only part of this vigorous portrait of medieval life, which al

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Byzantium: The Early Centuries

John Julius Norwich · 416 pages

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Chronicles of the Crusades

Jean de Joinville, Geoffrey de Villehardouin · 362 pages

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Two Lives of Charlemagne

Einhard, Notker the Stammerer · 227 pages

"These two LIVES provide a fascinating contrast. Einhard, who spent twenty-three years in Charlemagne's service, chose to approach his Vita Caroli as a public history and, in beautifully expressed language, recounts Charlemagne's personal life and his achievements in warfare, learning, art, building, and in the skilful administration of the state. Notker the monk's De Carolo Magno is a collection

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Ibn Fadlān and the Land of Darkness: Arab Travellers in the Far North

'Hmd bn fDln, Ahmad ibn Fadlan · 256 pages

"In 922 AD, an Arab envoy from Baghdad named Ibn Fadlan encountered a party of Viking traders on the upper reaches of the Volga River. In his subsequent report on his mission he gave a meticulous and astonishingly objective description of Viking customs, dress, table manners, religion and sexual practices, as well as the only eyewitness account ever written of a Viking ship cremation. Between the

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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

Various · 216 pages

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Jerusalem: The Biography

Simon Sebag Montefiore · 672 pages

Jerusalem is the universal city, the capital of two peoples, the shrine of three faiths; it is the prize of empires, the site of Judgement Day and the battlefield of today's clash of civilizations. From King David to Barack Obama, from the birth of Judaism, Christianity and Islam to the Israel-Palestine conflict, this is the epic history of three thousand years of faith, slaughter, fanaticism and

Medieval HistoryHistoryNonfictionDense Prose
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Four Queens: The Provençal Sisters Who Ruled Europe

Nancy Goldstone · 352 pages

Four accomplished sisters who rose from near obscurity to become the most powerful women in EuropeSet against the backdrop of the turbulent thirteenth century, a time of chivalry and crusades, poetry, knights, and monarchs comes the story of the four beautiful daughters of the count of Provence whose brilliant marriages made them the queens of France, England, Germany, and Sicily.From a cultured c

Medieval HistoryHistoryNonfiction
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