Medieval Europe

A spirited and thought-provoking history of the vast changes that transformed Europe during the 1,000-year span of the Middle Ages

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.

• The Birth of Classical Europe: A History from Troy to Augustine (The Penguin History of Europe)
• Two Lives of Charlemagne (Penguin Classics)
• The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400-1000 (The Penguin History of Europe)
• Peasant Fires: The Drummer of Niklashausen
• Reading the Middle Ages: Sources from Europe, Byzantium, and the Islamic World, Second Edition
• The Song of Roland (Penguin Classics)
• The Black Death and the Transformation of the West
• Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error
• The Decameron (Signet Classics)
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Penguin Classics)