Books like The worlds of medieval Europe by Clifford R. Backman

An engaging look at daily life in medieval towns, illustrating the experiences of families, merchants, clergy, scholars, and artists and revealing the customs that shaped Middle Age civilization.

A sweeping, narrative history of the Middle Ages that blends cultural, religious, and social insight with updated scholarship and new biographical sketches, offering a fresh, engaging view of medieval life.

This richly illustrated book tells the story of Europe and the Mediterranean over a thousand years which saw the creation of western civilization. Written by expert scholars and based on the latest research, it gives the general reader the most authoritative account of life in medieval Europe between the fall of the Roman Empire and the coming of the Renaissance. The story is one of profound diversity and change: the political empires of Charlemagne or the Byzantines, contrasting with the new nations which fought the Hundred Years War; the expression of religion in the great monasteries and cathedrals, and in the ideals of ecclesiastical poverty and reform; the mixed ambitions of the Crusades; the cultural worlds of chivalric knights and heroic romance, popular festivals, and the realism of the new arts; economic expansion and social catastrophe, such as the Black Death. The authors describe both the strange and the familiar. We have endured nothing comparable to the vast upheavals of migration and new institutions of the Dark Ages between 400 and 900. Consequently the new attitudes and ways of life that grew up from 900 to 1500 around the cathedrals and universities, the royal courts and commercial cities, remain central in modern societies. Our towns and villages, the nation state and democratic forms of government, our commerce and banking, our university courses, our novels and history books, our concern with the relationship between physical and spiritual realms-all had their origins in the medieval world. The six chapters in this book are divided between the Mediterranean world and northern Europe to show the movement of the centre of gravity in European life from the Mediterranean to the north. The authors explore the contrast between Byzantine and Renaissance cultures in the south and the new, complex political and social structures of north-west Europe, which by 1300 had the most advanced civilization the world had ever seen. Over two hundred illustrations, including twenty-four colour plates, amplify the text; and the picture is completed with comprehensive reference material in maps, genealogies, a chronology, lists of further reading, and a full index including personal dates.

A chronological guide to the Middle Ages from 400 A.E. to 1600 A.D., covering Africa, the Americas, Europe, and the Far East for young readers.

An in‑depth look at medieval civilization, combining scholarly commentary with medieval art and writings.

The Roman empire tends to be seen as a whole whereas the early middle ages tends to be seen as a collection of regional histories, roughly corresponding to the land-areas of modern nation states. As a result, early medieval history is much more fragmented. In recent decades, the rise of early medieval archaeology has also transformed our source-base, but this has not been adequately integrated into analyses of documentary history in almost any country. This book integrates documentary and archaeological evidence together, and provides a history of the period 400—800, by means of systematic comparative analyses of each of the regions of the latest Roman and immediately post-Roman world, from Denmark to Egypt (only the Slav areas are left out). The book concentrates on classic socio-economic themes, state finance, the wealth and identity of the aristocracy, estate management, peasant society, rural settlement, cities, and exchange. These are only a partial picture of the period, but they are intended as a framing for other developments, without which those other developments cannot be properly understood. The book argues that only a complex comparative analysis can act as the basis for a wider synthesis. The book takes all different developments as typical, and constructs a synthesis based on a better understanding of difference and the reasons for it.

"The millennium between the breakup of the western Roman Empire and the Reformation was a long and hugely transformative period--one not easily chronicled within the scope of a few hundred pages. Yet distinguished historian Chris Wickham has taken up the challenge in this landmark book, and he succeeds in producing the most riveting account of medieval Europe in a generation. Tracking the entire sweep of the Middle Ages across Europe, Wickham focuses on important changes century by century, including such pivotal crises and moments as the fall of the western Roman Empire, Charlemagne's reforms, the feudal revolution, the challenge of heresy, the destruction of the Byzantine Empire, the rebuilding of late medieval states, and the appalling devastation of the Black Death. He provides illuminating vignettes that underscore how shifting social, economic, and political circumstances affected individual lives and international events. Wickham offers both a new conception of Europe's medieval period and a provocative revision of exactly how and why the Middle Ages matter"--