Greetings Historians,

I’m not sure if this is appropriate or not to post here, but I was hoping to get some help with a gift idea I had for a family member is who deeply interested in medieval studies. To put it short: She’s read nearly everything I can think of in terms of pop culture books as well as some academic works on the history of medieval Europe. We’re talking a person who has a nearly encyclopedic knowledge of the royal families and geopolitics of the era, and I’d really like to surprise her with something special.

So, here’s my idea:

I’d like to find some harder to access materials that wouldn’t be on your typical bookstore shelf, or perhaps wouldn’t be the first items that would come up in a search for information on the era. I have access to research databases, so I was considering gathering some more interesting papers, reviews, and articles as well as maybe a major academic text or two. She’s also reported a gap in her knowledge related to the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East, which I’ve been able to look more deeply into thanks to some other helpful subreddits.

What I’m looking for would be suggestions of papers and other reading that might be intriguing to someone who I’d say has around an intermediate or upper intermediate understanding of royal lineages and geopolitics of the era; however, I don’t necessarily want something so technical that it’s overwhelming in terms of statistical analyses, etc. Maybe some watershed papers or ones that present controversial information you don’t typically see in published books (or that haven’t appeared yet in secondary sources). Ideally, something more academic than the pop culture books, but something less intense than meta-analyses and theoretical approaches that might require a dedicated degree to unravel.

Hopefully this post is okay, and hopefully you can help me find that sweet spot for her!

And thank you so much for your suggestions!