This is adapted from a question I answered earlier in the week. It's very heavily focused on the period past the 11th century, but most people seem to prefer this period. Some of these books are also a bit pricey, so I recommend getting a membership with your local library and getting them in on inter-library loan.

#So you want to learn about life in the Middle Ages?

1. Introduction to Medieval Europe 300–1500, by Wim Blockmans and ‎Peter Hoppenbrouwers. This is the best all-round textbook on medieval Europe. It's mostly focused on themes and development of society rather than political history (i.e. wars, backstabbing, etc), but it does touch on them where necessary to understand changes. The focus is primarily on Western Europe, but mention of Eastern Europe, the Byzantine Empire and the Islamic world is made when these areas intersect or influence Western Europe to a significant degree.

John M Riddle's A History of the Middle Ages, 300-1500 is also an option. while it's not quite as up to date as Introduction, it's slightly longer and covers the topic slightly differently, so that you get more information about topics such as family life and better covers the Islamic world and the Byzantine empire. Which one I'd recommend would depend on whether you prefer "up to date" or "a decade out of date, but broader in scope".

2. The Middle Ages: Everyday Life in Medieval Europe, by Jeffery L. Singman. There's no perfect book on everyday life in the middle ages, because it's both a long period and circumstances differed from kingdom to kingdom. However, Singman's book, although focused on mid-13th century England (with one digression to France) is nonetheless the best work I've read, perhaps because it does focus on just a single part of Europe. Singman does an excellent job of bringing out the structure of life for the ordinary people, how they thought, what they owned, and how they went about their lives. The introductory books above will help you realise where England differs from other kingdoms. I also highly recommend Paul B. Newman's Daily Life in the Middle Ages which, rather than describing daily life, instead functions as a sourcebook for information about specific parts of daily life (how they cooked, hygiene, how they built, what they wore, how they relaxed, etc). It's a really good supplement to Singman.

As an addition, Joseph and Frances Gies' Daily Life in a Medieval Castle also has some chapters on the daily functioning of an aristocratic family that provide extra knowledge and a very useful chapter on hunting and are worth reading with caution, due to the age of the book.

3. Sexuality in Medieval Europe: Doing Unto Others, by Ruth Mazo Karras. Medieval sexuality was very different from our modern conception of the subject, revolving more around whether the partner was an active or passive participant than about gender attraction. Of course, the latter played a prominent role as well, but even in heterosexual relationships it mattered who was active and who was passive. In short, medieval sexuality, while different to our own, was no less messy and complicated as it is today, and Karras does a very credible job of exploring it.

4. The Fontana Economic History of Europe Volume 1: The Middle Ages, ed. by Carlo M. Cipolla. There really hasn't been a good general synthesis on the medieval economy since the 1970s, when N.J.G. Pound's * An Economic History of Medieval Europe* (which received some very minor updates in the early 90s), The Fontana Economic History of Europe Volume 1: The Middle Ages, ed. by Carlo M. Cipolla, and Gerald A. Hodgett's A Social and Economic History of Medieval Europe came out. Steven A. Epstein's An Economic and Social History of Later Medieval Europe, 1000-1500, while up to date, is too short to provide a really good overview of both economic and social developments as he attempts to do, and the latter are better done in the general histories already recommended.

Of the 3 1970 works, the Fontana Economic History is, in my opinion, the best at explaining how the medieval economy worked and how it developed throughout the second half of the middle ages. As an edited work, the chapters don't always cover the same periods and the focus is very much from the 12th to the 15th century rather than earlier periods, but as each is written by an expert in their field (with perhaps the exception of Lynn White Jr. who, in spite of his contributions to the field of medieval history, was a controversial figure even at the time) and so the authors are quite good at explaining how parts of the medieval economy functioned. This is probably the biggest failing of N.J.G. Pound's work, although it is otherwise an excellent history, while Hodgett has much the same problem as Epstein.

5. Cathedral, Forge and Waterwheel, by Frances and Joseph Gies. A large number of technological innovations were made during the Middle Ages and, rather than being a period of scientific and technological stagnation, the medieval world consistently improved on the technology of the Romans. The Gies provide a good (if now slightly dated - some significant finds have put the proto-blast furnace back nearly two hundred years, for example) summary of the evolution of technology from late Antiquity through to the Early Modern period and, most importantly, discuss the exchange and diffusion of technology across the world. Considering the small size of the book, the Gies do an incredible job of exploring all of this in an informative and actually useful manner.

6. Medieval Warfare Source Book, Volumes 1 & 2, by David Nicolle. There is no single volume that adequately covers the military developments of the Middle Ages, but David Nicolle comes the closest. He covers recruitment, organisation, equipment, tactics, strategy, fortifications, siege techniques and pretty much every other aspect of warfare for almost the entirely world between 400 and 1400 AD. As with the Gies, Nicolle does an impressive job of parring down an enormous amount of information into a useful summary, and the result is two volumes that I recommend to even academics who study the middle ages but who don't specialize in warfare. Some criticism can be leveled at the fact that most of Asia was summarised into a single chapter when it deserved a volume to itself, but given the limited amount of information on the subject published in a language the author could read (Japan not withstanding), I think this is understandable.

A slightly bigger problem is that Nicolle doesn't have the opportunity to expand on a lot of his information. Don't get me wrong, you will still get an excellent overview out of the books and certainly be well informed, but it may be useful to supplement the volumes with J.F. Verbruggen's The Art of Warfare in Western Europe which, although out of date in some places, still offers one of the best explanations of medieval strategy and provides a "Face of Battle" exploration of infantry and cavalry that is missing from most other academic works. Still, this is just an optional extra - Nicolle alone will suffice if your friend doesn't want to go down the milhist rabbit hole.

7. Medieval Women, by Henrietta Leyser. I'll admit upfront that Leyser has a positivist view on medieval women. She's not an extreme case, but she does have a moderately positive spin on the lives of medieval women and tend towards positive takes on ambiguous information. However, I recommend Leyser because pop-culture and "common knowledge" has so distorted people's views on medieval women that the default view is similar to that held by the more extreme negativists. As such, a mildly positivist view is in my opinion a necessary starting point for anyone interested in medieval women's history, because it counteracts the ingrained negative bias and sets the ground for a more balanced view of women as active participants in medieval life rather than eternal victims.

Medieval Women also has another weak spot in that it focuses purely on English women, and there was a lot of variation in the lives and treatment of women elsewhere in Europe. If you want a broader overview of medieval women, then Jennifer Ward's Women in Medieval Europe: 1200-1500 is a good overview of women in the later middle ages (although trending slightly towards negative interpretations). Both books, however, do justice to women as having an active and varied role in medieval life beyond victim and housewife.

8. Medieval Christianity: A New History, by Kevin Madigan. I confess, I haven't had a chance to read this book yet, but it comes very highly recommended and the reviews indicate that it provides an evenly balanced view of how Christinaity developed from late Antiquity through to the Early Modern period. Since Christianity had such a prominent place in the medieval world, it's a good idea to get a reasonable grounding on the subject.

I spent some time going through the Book List and I pulled out all the ones I saw that had audiobooks. Might the mods be interested in putting this somewhere? There were a few previous topics asking about audiobooks so I went on a hunt to find the ones that were probably reliable.

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I also went through the Best Presidential Biographies blog and found the ones available in audiobook there as well.

Hi all! I'm looking for recs for Nigerian (or general western African) history. Anything from ancient to modern, with an emphasis on texts by Nigerian/west African authors. A focus on race relations (between native groups, or between colonizing groups & native groups) and language issues would be great! I'm interested mainly to gain some background knowledge so I can read Nigerian and Nigerian-American fiction more mindfully/critically, with awareness of how the Nigerian and Nigerian-American histories play into each other.

I read it a while, but haven't had a chance to write here, but read Serious Fun: A History Of Spectator Sports In The U.S.S.R. by Robert Edelman:

This is one of the few English-language books to look at Soviet sports and how the Soviet people consumed sports. Focusing mainly on soccer, with a little attention to hockey and basketball (in that order the three main spectator sports of the USSR), Edelman demonstrates that Soviet society was not that different than the West when it came to viewing sports.

The book does not look at games, players, or stats, but instead looks at how the sports were consumed, formed, and organised throughout the Soviet era. It is limited in that he wrote it as the USSR fell, so there is no archival material used as a source: instead he heavily relies on Soviet newspapers, which does limit the interpretation (a fact he admits in his next book on Spartak Moscow, which made use of archival material). However that is not a major detriment, as Edelman does give some good perspective, albeit the reader should be cautious as new material has somewhat changed the outlook on Soviet sports (the government did try to play a larger role than implied here). For people interested in Soviet sports, this is a key book to read, and is definitely a formative text on the subject.

One minor issue though is that throughout the book there are many spelling errors, with the most egregious being the use of "Tblisi" rather than "Tbilisi." It is a peculiar error, as the Russian version of the city doesn't omit any "i" like happens here, and while barely noticeable to most readers, is still something that should have been caught.

Hey folks! Hope your all having a lovely day. Does anyone have any good recommendations on books about Andrew Carnegie? Especially his early fortune making and later philanthropy.

Or for that matter on the development of libraries. Doesn't really matter where in the world, but I've been reading a fair bit about the history of the LA Library, as well as some sort of general history stuff and I'm interested in digging deeper.

Hey hey. Was wondering if anyone might be able to recommend some academic histories of beer and ale?

Any recommendations about the history of Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, specifically the effect their live album in 1975 had on the national market?

I'm curious about this album after seeing it described as a "milestone album in the history of rock". I'm also curious about the race aspects of it, because many songs played in that concert were Motown or blues standards traditionally associated with black artists, that he was appropriating to some degree.

Looking for some books on Medieval Ireland.

Mainly in relation to how Ireland was different from the rest of Europe. My lens is the 14th Century, but earlier would be good to.

A bit late to the post, but anything economics. I recently read "The Economic History of China: From Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century" off the sidebar list. Great read, particularly enjoyed learning how society changed with the introduction of new crops and farming techniques. Something I've never given a lot of thought to. So anything interesting you could think of in economics, doesn't have to be any era or place, or even explicitly about economics. Thank you!