Category: Middle Ages
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In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World It Made (2001) by Norman F. Cantor
Norman Cantor’s “In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World It Made” (2001) is an ambitious but deeply problematic attempt to recast the Black Death as a transformative force in Western history, blending conventional scholarship with speculative leaps that often lack sufficient evidence. This isn’t the kind of book I expected…
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Magna Carta: The Birth of Liberty (2015) by Dan Jones
The Magna Carta. It’s one of those things that everyone knows, but few truly know anything about. Hip Hop mega star Jay-Z (for reasons known only to him) titled his 2013 album “Magna Carta Holy Grail.” In 2014, British Prime Minister David Cameron, who one would presume would know a thing or two about it,…
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Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World (2004) by Jack Weatherford
The early 1990s marked the first time that Genghis Khan and his empire – defunct since at least the mid-fourteenth century – could be studied in-depth. “The Secret History of the Mongols,” re-discovered in the early nineteenth century, had finally been translated, and the collapse of the Soviet Union had opened up the so-called Ikh…
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City of Fortune: How Venice Ruled the Seas (2012) by Roger Crowley
Roger Crowley has carved out a rather respectable niche for himself as a popular historian of the Mediterranean in the late Middle Ages. His scholarship is first-rate, his prose is crisp and colorful, his narratives are clear and accessible. His latest effort, “City of Fortune: How Venice Ruled the Seas,” is no exception. Crowley charts…
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