Every year as the summer approaches I look for something different from my normal reading list to read while on vacation. This year I happened on this volume about Medieval history and decided that it would be my holiday reading this summer. I was especially intrigued by the title. It was a nice counterpoint to the oft-used (and IMO inappropriate) descriptor of the Early Middle Ages as the "Dark Ages".
The book is not a comprehensive history of the period or even a survey history. It is a selection of stories that are not as well known, told from a different point of view. The authors also take effort to remind the reader that the whole dividing of history into ages and eras is a bit artificial. It is not like there are hard divisions between different periods of history, there are always crossovers and holdovers.
I found this a very easy and entertaining read. Many of the stories were ones I was either completely unfamiliar with or were ones I had only heard from a very different perspective. I really appreciated the time taken to push the reader to see a Medieval Europe where female voices and people of colour were more a part of the story than most history has portrayed. In the same vein the intentional lifting up of the tension of a multicultural, multi-religious, world connected across Europe, Africa, and Asia was greatly appreciated.
It was indeed a good choice to start my vacation with.
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