Help Please with a Book Suggestion...

The Predicament::: I have a friend who would like to read a book about the Middle Ages. Yes, a single book and a rather broad timeframe to cover.

Now my own interests was/is early medieval and I hardly went beyond the 12th Century, so you can see what my problem is. I seriously doubt he, or anyone else, is much interested in wergeld and barracking; and I don't have a good broad view of the literature outside my narrow interest.

What he said is that he wants "something like 'Battle Cry of Freedom' for the middle ages."

Which brings up the second problem that keeps me from complying: that I've never read that book and haven't a clue what the approach was.

So, if any of you ever so gracious individuals have any ideas I would be overjoyed to hear them.

I don't know what 'Battle Cry of Freedom' is either.... But I would suggest Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror. It only covers the 14th century, but it covers pretty much every aspect of life in the 14th century, including all the fun plagues and wars and stuff. It's sortof halfway between a novel and a history book - Tuchman follows the life of one real 14th century man, and in the process covers all sorts of information about the Middle Ages. It's a great read - not too fluffy, but not too academic either.

I remember I found Carlo M. Cipolla's Before the Industrial Revolution at the time both illuminating and a joy to read .

Try Medieval Europe: A Short History by C. Warren Hollister. Obviously it only covers Europe but that's probably what he is looking for. It covers most of the basics and is written for the non-expert.

How about A World Lit only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance. I'm no historian so can't be sure it covers the complete period that you're after but I found it a really interesting read.

I'm not a student of history, but as a newcomer to medieval history, i read The Medieval Imprint and found it (at around 200 pages) an easy introduction to themes in law, religion and society which made me go "wow" a lot. Later on The Portable Medieval Reader seemed a good one-book overview of what people were thinking.
(edited for touchstones)

The Barbara Tuchman is a good place to start. I also like Norman F. Cantor's The Civilization of the Middle Ages as a standard intro to the period. I also like The Devil's Broker, by Frances Stonor Saunders. Like the Tuchman, it too covers the fourteenth century, but it's an excellent introduction to the middle ages.

Neither Tuchman or Manchester have a particularly good rep as far as getting their facts straight - I haven't read either so I can't comment beyond that.

That said, sometimes reading a book like that is what it takes to get you interested in the period so it's not always the worst thing. I got interested in it through reading LOTR - hardly something filled with historical facts! The more factual books tend to be pretty dry.

Please, NOT A World Lit Only by Fire for an only book! It's AWFUL!

Having blasted that Lit Only by Fire thing, I should get into recommendations. Cantor is opinionated, but fairly accurate. Tuchman is eminently readable, if rather superficial. Her Distant Mirror is not too bad as an introduction.
There are also Time-Life series that are particularly easy to read and not very long, if shallow, like What life was like in the Age of Chivalry.
Medieval civilization, 400-1500 by Jacques Le Goff is a standard.
For a really massive overview, there's The Great medieval civilizations by Gaston Wiet, but that's way too much for a beginner, I'm sure. My librarything catalog is full of medieval books, but most are rather specialized.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. I'm finding them interesting to read.

Tim, of course, is always a wonder. And Tuchman is a good idea. I haven't read that book but I've read another.

Sgt.Bigg, I'm a big fan of Warren but bless his heart he's a bit dry. He did write wonderful survey books though.

And it's been so long since I've read Cantor that I can't remember what he is like to read, but I'm definitely going to put that on the list as well. Same for Le Goff.

I think it's hysterical that none of us seem to have read the referenced book.

Thanks again. It will be interesting to see what he picks.

I think the current version (#9, 10 or 11 -- I am not sure exactly) of Medieval Europe: A Short History by C. Warren Hollister, which has a second author, Judith M. Bennett, is quite enjoyable. It also includes a little more information about women. I have read it various times for various classes and it is a good text book.

>12 ThePam: I should have added that I have read Battle Cry of Freedom. If you have any interest in the War of Succession and only want to read one book, this is the one. It is a little biased towards the yankees, but we got ours back with the Shelby Foote three volume history. I believe McPherson won a pulitzer for it for whatever that's worth.

I would suggest Daily Life in the Middle Ages by Paul B. Newman. A very good read for the medieval student, covering the entire medieval period.

I would have to agree with the Medieval Europe: A Short History by Warren Hollister, with revisions by Judith M. Bennett.

I own The Horizon Book of the Middle Ages and thought it seemed like a good general overview to me. It's a large, coffe-table type book, with many illustrations. I'll let the history experts here weigh in on whether it is good or bad in terms of accuracy and such. :)

One drawback is that it is older (1968) and out of print, so, like any older or out-of-print book, it may take slightly more hunting to obtain.

I'm going to suggest three books. First, a traditional history looking at a broad swath of time, and an oldie but goodie - Marc Bloch's two volume set Feudal Society. Feudal Society is short, has plenty of interesting analysis, and gives a good flavor for the period. Second, try Montaillou by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie for a more specific history of a time and place. Finally, why not just read Chaucer?

In all events, Manchester's A World Lit Only by Fire is total and absolute junk - a horrible monstrosity of a book. I only read it because it was assigned to my 14 year old in World History, and I needed to repair some of the damage (I ended up telling her not to read it and gave her some other things, and it seemed to do the trick).

A-musing indeed 8-) I like your remedy for the Manchester book enormously! And yes, Bloch is a good choice.

I have a couple books that, in size and number of color plates might be considered "coffee table books" except that they are detailed studies of a particular time/place, etc., and nowhere near superficial enough to be given that label.

My own suggestion for a particular time and place would be a different one, but not all that different in time: Runciman's Sicilian Vespers, which I just got around to reading recently. Easier reading than many a novel, which is nice for a beginner.

Bloch IS a great choice which had entirely escaped me. And I'm not familiar with Ladurie, so something for my own reading list too. Thanks.

(ps-such good ideas, I'm thinking of pulling together a recommended reading list for my blog based on them. You know, something like, "curious about the middle ages... try these books". Of course, I'm totally out of my depth with the middle and late periods or I'd break down the recommendations further.)

Well it is a really long period of time, a lot of books cover the era stretching from the 5th Century to the learly 16th. And a lot of things happened in that interval.

For the late Middle Ages I would recommend The Name of the Rose by Eco, and A Distant Mirror by Tuchman.

For the earlier Middle Ages it is hard to beat the work of Bernard Cornwell, his Arthurian Britain series.."The Warlord Chronicles", starting with The Winter King is excellent.

Cornwell revisists the middle Middle Ages in his Saxon Stories, a series starting with The Last Kingdom. Again, these are very well written stories with strong characters and intriguing plots.

Cornwell is just a great writer period.

I cannot think of one book that covers the whole period (fiction or nonfiction), so these ideas are probably not all that helpful.

Ladurie's good for readability but not so good for historical accuracy.

Supposedly he took information contained in the
Inquisitorial records about other villages and applied it to Montaillou.
He was able to paint a much fuller picture of the village than he would
have been able to otherwise.

You can find more on this from Leonard Boyle's, "Montaillou
Revisited: Mentalite and Methodology," in _Pathways to Medieval Peasants_, ed. J. Ambrose Raftis (Toronto, 1981), pp. 119-40.

My recollection is that he was fairly clear about when he was using broader data for inferences and when he was dealing with village specific data. It's an inevitable struggle, and may even be particularly useful in using the book in classes (where I first ran in to it), since I think the goal of getting so local makes the problem in Ladurie more acute than in many other works. But I'll have to look at that article some time.

I think Eco is wonderful for someone trying to get a broad sense, since he's a medievalist turned novelist. His Baudalino might be a good choice, too.

I really need to read Sicilian Vespers. Another book I enjoyed that might be interesting as an introduction is Ornament of the World, focusing on Medieval Spain and the interplay of the three religions there.

I loved Name of the Rose immoderately. I hated Foucault's Pendulum. Nevertheless, I tried Eco again for Baudolino. Unfortunately, I know WAY too much about the Staufer kings to accept the latter part of the book where he wanders off into some kind of fever dream(the best interpretation I can put on his treatment of Barbarossa's death). The earlier part of that book is actually quite good in several ways, including the picture of the life of a mercernary soldier, as I recall.
Sicilian Vespers was one of those "Ireally need to read" books for a long time for me. It's really a good read, and the Appendix pretty well covers the few quibbles people throw up against it, involving the roles of a couple of the movers and shakers.

I second #17 above, The Horizon Book of the Middle Ages is a great overview, though probably hard to find. It contains the text of a book The Middle Ages by Morris Bishop, plus pictures. Here is the product description from Amazon.com, "In this single indispensable volume, one of America"s ranking scholars combines a life's work of research and teaching with the art of lively narration. Both authoritative and beautifully told, THE MIDDLE AGES is the full story of the thousand years between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance — a time that saw the rise of kings and emperors, the flowering of knighthood, the development of Europe, the increasing power of the Church, and the advent of the middle class. With exceptional grace and wit, Morris Bishop vividly reconstructs this distinctive era of European history in a work that will inform and delight scholars and general readers alike."

Another book I highly recommend is the second volume of the series A History of Private Life, A History of Private Life, Volume II, Revelations of the Medieval World by Phillippe Aries. It is also an excellent overview.

I just purchased Europe after Rome by Julia M.H. Smith, which promises "an entirely fresh approach to the period c. 500-1000, arguing that the post-Roman world was characterized by great diversity of experience and perception. The author "uses an innovative methodology combining cultural history, regional studies and gender history" (don't more authors do that?).
I bought it because of Peter Brown's opinion of it: "A masperpiece (...) catches the living texture of Western Europe from Rome to the Hebrides (...) truly the portrait of an age (...) does the same for this period as that other work of genius, Richard Southern's The Making of the Middle Ages.
So now you've two suggestions.

Well, the Southern book is terrific. I've never heard of the Smith book, but that description sounds as if it were written by someone who hasn't read much medieval history.

Erilarlo: curious as to why you say that (about J. Smith).

@ 27 erilarlo

Maybe this is helpful: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=12710

Simply that I HAVE never heard of the auithor, J. Smith. The use of the word "innovative" in the description just strikes me as gushy, since I don't believe this methodology is a new invention.

"Innovative"?

The H-review says:
"Foundational histories of the early Middle Ages, such as Henri Pirenne's work on the economic consequences of the rise of Islam, argued that large forces or trends determined societies' fates. More recent treatments have stressed the political narrative, focusing especially on the effects of the "barbarian invasions" on a decaying Roman Empire. In fashioning this new description of the early medieval period, however, Smith turns away from both of these models, focusing instead on cultural theory, especially its emphasis on human agency. Her interest in the culture of the early Middle Ages, rather than economic or political trends, also determined her unusual organization, which is based on large themes rather than following a chronological progression. Each chapter tackles a different aspect of early medieval society, and for each she examines data from all over Europe and for the entire period."

Maybe that is the innovative thing.
But Henry Kamen did such a thing with social classes in his Early Modern European Society, a book I enjoyed very much.
Being enthousiastic dilitanti we will solve this question in time.

By the way: Peter Brown who wrote all those strong recommendations for Europe after Rome is, as you may know, a magnificent historian.

The part of the review that interests me and indicates that she's at least on the right track is, "Smith's early medieval period is instead characterized by localism, regional variations, and change occurring in varying times and places." The most recent book I'm ga-ga over is Whickham's Framing the Early Middle Ages for that very reason - but I'd never recommend that as an intro.

That's the problem with overviews - they're overviews and can't avoid generalizations even though recent research consistently shows that all but the broadest generalizations don't work. Of course then the problem becomes what to recommend to a person as an intro to the Middle Ages - you can't ask him or her to start with "Characteristics of the Duchy of Burgundy from 946 to 951" (there is no such book - I don't think). The best I've ever been able to do is tell someone to read something, look for the period/geographic region you're interested in and go footnote-chasing.

I looked for a TMR (The Medieval Review) Review for Smith and didn't find it and I only have access to Speculum through JSTOR to 2003 (newer than that and I have to be at the library) but H-Net's pretty reliable and Brown is very reliable so I'd think it would be a good book. Hard to say if it works as an intro though. The fact that it's a cultural history is a bit of a paradigm shift - generally I think beginning readers would be better off starting with a chronological history, then follow with something like this. Plus I'm a little concerned about trying to explore local characteristics of a continent over 500 years in under 300 pages of text but if it's well footnoted and has a good bibliography she might be able to do the period justice.

I think this book sounds interesting and am going to heave it up on the TBR. My one caveat is that I don't believe in separating economics from culture. But we'll see. Thanks for links.

Well good buddies...

I thought you might be curious as to what book my friend chose for his foray into medieval times.

It was 1066: The Year of the Three Battles by Frank McLynn

=========

Thank you everyone for your suggestions.
This is a great group.

I want to throw something out there and it isn't worth a new thread. Barbarians and Romans: The Birth Struggle of Europe by Justine Davis Randers-Pehrson is available through Abebooks from several stores for under $5 American (plus S&H). Now it's a seriously dated book - 1983 - however Thomas Burns gave it a favorable review in the American Historical Review in 1984.

I bought it myself when I saw the price - if it's even decent I may buy a couple more and give it to friends. If someone's looking for a 1st work about Late Antiquity and doesn't want to spend any money, they could do worse. I won't recommend it but it sounds like it's worth that price - someone can read it to figure out if he or she is interested in the period, then move on to something newer and more reliable if they are.

I am so glad that you recommended A Distant Mirror. I listed it in my library as it is one of my all time favorite books and authors. When I listed the book it showed that no one else had read or listed it. I found this unimaginable. I too recommend this as a good read for the friend.

>36 MrCanoe:
Your copy is separated from the other copies listed on LibraryThing because of a typo in the author's name.

If you want to read A Distant Mirror you may be entertained but you likely won't learn much. Or at least not much that you won't later have to unlearn. Bernard Bachrach wrote a scathing review of it in the June, 1979 issue of The American Historical Review. Now Bernie's well known for lacking much empathy for anyone using anything but the strictest standards of historiography and he may have gone a bit overboard in attacking a best seller. But it is nice to know that he hasn't changed much over 30 years. ;)

However Dartmouth's Charles Wood wrote a review in the April, 1979 issue of Speculum which comes across as much more balanced - he recognizes her skill as a writer and that a popularization shouldn't be held to the same standard as a strictly academic book. However even he finishes with, "As a result A Distant Mirror must be judged distinctly a failure and yet, in the end, because occasionally the epic shines through - "like a patch of sky through moving clouds" - this failure is not without its redeeming merits." p435, Speculum, Volume 54, Number 2 (April, 1979)

I always wonder how hard to bash popularizations for getting it wrong (and in this case I haven't read it so it's 2nd-hand bashing which is even worse). So much medieval history is written with the texture of rice cakes. So if someone reads it and it inspires an interest, that's a good thing - as long as it isn't the last and only thing someone reads.

Thanks to sqdancer on the editing advice.

Is fiction included in this discussion?

>40 cemanuel: And if you can edit a post here I don't know how.

To edit your post, just click on the little pencil icon beside your post.

#39, not really.

Fiction is interesting, but generally not trustworthy as the facts are frequently stretched and twisted to make them more interesting, or to fit the plot.

#38, Cemanuel, I'm surprised Bernie would comment on A Distant Mirror as I thought his expertise was Roman Gaul.

I'm not - Bernie's never been shy about commenting on anything - though I don't know how AHR solicits reviews. As for his expertise, I'd say it's more Merovingian and Carolingian, not Roman. Of course this was 30 years ago - maybe he was doing some work on the 14th century then.

But if, as both reviews say, Tuchman relied heavily on and accepted as gospel Froissart then bashing would come pretty easy if someone were so inclined.

I knew next to nothing about medieval France when I first encountered and read A Distant Mirror, so I enjoyed it. If she had been writing about medieval Germany, I might not have. I've studied a lot more about medieval Europe over the years since, including a good bit of historiography, and become much more conscious of the dangers of relying on a single source, more or less primary or secondary. That said, for a total beginner, the Tuchman book is easy to read and might lead to more reliable works.

Recommending a (as in one) book on the Middle Ages is impossible. Battle Cry of Freedom is not a good example of a type of book in this instance because the Middle Ages covered several hundred years and involves all types of histories, political, social, military ecclesiastical etc etc etc. I have 69 books tagged as being Medieval (rough overlap with Middle Ages) and I see some other good suggestions here that could even be classed as Renaissance. Those Terrible Middle Ages by Regine Pernoud might be a place to start, but note that the title is ironic, she is trying to make the case that our prejudices about that era are misplaced. I would highly recommend it. Good luck on your search for a book!

#44, Cemanuel... you are right in correcting me. When I wrote that I was thinking transition (from Rome to Frankish) and should have said Merovingian. In any case, seemed an odd pairing (Bernie and that later time period :)

As a followup, having read Julia Smith's Europe After Rome I'd say that it was "OK." I didn't find that it broke any real new ground and as I suspected, by trying to cover so much ground while using so little paper, it's pretty much a thematic overview.

OTOH, it's reasonably free of any huge errors (though I'd argue with her about there being no difference between a slave and a serf) and is pretty readable. I'd say it wouldn't be a bad choice for someone new to Late Antiquity/Early Medieval Europe who's just finished a narrative history of the period and is looking for something which discusses some of the issues.