Recommendations from our site
“It was hugely influential because it foregrounded the idea that there is nothing inevitable about Europe as we find it today, or about how it developed in the Middle Ages. Europe was constructed rather than simply coming into being. In some ways, that feels obvious now, because a lot of work has built on Bartlett’s ideas or challenged them in different ways. But at the time it was published, the notion that Europe was itself a product of colonial expansion, rather than just an exporter of colonial mentalities, was quite radical.” Read more...
The best books on Medieval Europe
Thomas Williams, Historian
“What this book does—and, in my view, much better than any of its rivals—is explain the Latin Western environment from which crusading emerged. It describes how the heartlands of Europe produced a warrior aristocracy: figures who can be described as ‘of slender means but with a big appetite.’” Read more...
The best books on The Crusades
Guy Perry, Historian
