Medieval Ages

In this account of Europe’s rise to world leadership in technology, Frances and Joseph Gies make use of recent scholarship to destroy two time-honored myths. Myth One: that Europe’s leap forward occurred suddenly in the “Renaissance,” following centuries of medieval stagnation. Myth Two: that Europe achieved its primacy through “Western” superiority.

The battle of Crécy in 1346 is one of the most famous and widely studied military engagements in history. The repercussions of this battle were felt for hundreds of years, and the exploits of those fighting reached the status of legend. Yet cutting-edge research has shown that nearly everything that has been written about this dramatic event may be wrong. In this new study, Michael Livingston reveals how modern scholars have used archived manuscripts, satellite technologies and traditional fieldwork to help unlock what was arguably the battle’s greatest secret.

In this 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 Catholic Church, and the advent of the middle class.

It has been ten summers since the noble sons of the North, Olaf and Torgil, were driven from their homeland by the treachery of the Norse king, Harald Eriksson. Having then escaped the horrors of slavery in Estland, they now fight among the Rus in the company of Olaf's uncle, Sigurd. It will be some of the bloodiest years in Rus history. The Grand Prince, Sviatoslav, is hungry for land, riches, and power, but his unending campaigns are leaving the corpses of thousands in their wakes.

A battle. A crown. The conqueror. The conquered. Medieval England - forever changed by the Battle of Hastings. And the rise of the formidable Wulfriths. After aiding the English resistance who once more fail to reclaim their country from the invaders, Lady Marguerite returns home to Scotland in the aftermath of William the Conqueror’s harrying of the North - and does not come alone. Accompanying the Sparrow of King Malcolm’s Court is a warrior mistakenly believed her enemy, the price for which may be his irreparable loss of sight.

In imagining a Viking, a certain image springs to mind: a barbaric warrior, leaping ashore from a longboat, and ready to terrorize the hapless local population of a northern European town. Yet while such characters define our imagination of the Viking Age today, they were in the minority. Instead, in the time-stopping soils, water, and ice of the North, Eleanor Barraclough excavates a preserved lost world, one that reimagines a misunderstood society.

Sir Guarin D’Argent knew the danger of allowing a woman to turn him from his purpose, and yet he answered her cry across a bloody battlefield. Now he finds himself the lady’s captive among vengeful Saxons, weeks becoming months while his liege, Duke William of Normandy, subdues his new English subjects. Biding his time, Guarin plots an escape dependent on captivating his captor, a formidable quest with one more a warrior than a lady. But when his compassion is roused by the suffering of her people under Norman rule, the question of escape is jeopardized.

For centuries, the Crusades have been central to the story of the medieval Near East, but these religious wars are only part of the region's complex history. As The Mongol Storm reveals, during the same era the Near East was utterly remade by another series of wars: the Mongol invasions. In a single generation, the Mongols conquered vast swaths of the Near East and upended the region's geopolitics. This is the definitive history of the Mongol assault on the Near East and its enduring global consequences.

Compiled by Thucydides, an Athenian historian and general during the Peloponnesian War, The History of the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC) is considered to be one of the first scholarly historical works ever written.

Read by the author. Traditional Christian virtue and vices like abstinence, gluttony, and sloth make many of us bored or uncomfortable. At their best, these words sound dead or confusing, like incomplete fossils that belong to a distant past awkwardly enshrined in a museum. At worst, they...

Buy this audiobook to claim your guide to the past, and prepare for an enlightening journey through the ages!

A Medieval Life offers a biography of one woman, a portrait of her world, and an introduction to historical method. Written in a clear and accessible style, it reworks a well-loved book to provide an entirely new resource for students, teachers, and general listeners. Like Cecilia Penifader, most people in the Middle Ages were peasants, humble people living socially below the knights, bishops, and kings who figure so large in history books. Judith M. Bennett shows that peasants, too, made history.

Though Lady Dangereuse of the Wulfriths may not have loved, she has certainly lost. Widowed young, she is devoted to managing her lands while helping her young son overcome the trauma of losing his sire. But when the injured knight who rejected her betrothal years ago falls into her hands, she turns her efforts to gaining the confession of one who may be more responsible for the violent death of her husband than she.

For years, Lady Susanna de Balliol has borne the blame for betrayal - well-earned, though not as believed by the man she can never forget. Now her nephew must prove his legitimacy or lose his claim to his father's lands. When Susanna is forced to flee with the boy following an attempt on his life, will the one man who knows the truth of her nephew's birth grant them sanctuary within his walls? More, will he aid the woman whom he believes cost him the love of his life?

In 871, three of England’s four kingdoms were overrun by Vikings, the ruthless, all-conquering Scandinavian raiders who terrorized early medieval Europe. With the Norsemen murdering one king with arrows and torturing another to death by ripping out his lungs, the prospects that faced the kingdom of Wessex were bleak. Worse still, the Saxons were now led by a young man barely out of his teens who was more interested in God than fighting.

Brought to you by Penguin. War Dragons. Fearsome Raiders. A Daemonic Warlord on the Rise. When the citizens of Black Keep see ships on the horizon, terror takes them because they know who is coming: for generations, the keep has been raided by the fearsome clanspeople of Tjakorsha. Saddling...

Even if she must sell herself in marriage to the highest bidder, Lady Laura Middleton is determined to provide her daughter a home and protector. But when Queen Eleanor presents her cousin with four suitors, among them is one who believes Laura betrayed him 10 years past. Despite her attempts to discourage his pursuit, he is determined to have her for the dowry needed to save his lands.

In The Fall of Rome, eminent historian Bryan Ward-Perkins argues that the "peaceful" theory of Rome's "transformation" is badly in error. Indeed, he sees the fall of Rome as a time of horror and dislocation that destroyed a great civilization, throwing the inhabitants of the West back to a standard of living typical of prehistoric times. Attacking contemporary theories with relish and making use of modern archaeological evidence, he looks at both the wider explanations for the disintegration of the Roman world and also the consequences for the lives of everyday Romans.

From leftover trenchers and stinky chamber pots to barber surgeons and the black plague, life could be really miserable for people during medieval times. Get ready to explore the nasty side of life in the Middle Ages.

Two outcasts in medieval England are brought together and share a destiny of passion in the third of the Velvet Montgomery Annals Quadrilogy from the New York Times bestselling author of The Duchess. With her father murdered, her home burned, lovely Alyx Blackelt fled to the woods and found...