Hello! I’m not a professional historian or anything. I just like reading about history because I find it really fascinating. I’m in the process of reading Christopher Tyerman’s book God’s War: A New History of the Crusades and while I’ve read other books about the Crusades before, I’ve started to notice that almost no book I’ve ever read really talks about the eleventh century before the Crusades. Tyerman is mentioning a number of events like the Battle of Manzikert and some kind of investiture conflict between the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor and I really don’t know what a lot of these events entail. I was just wondering if anyone has any book recommendations for European history around the eleventh century before the First Crusade (1000-1095.) Minus the Norman Conquest as the one book I do own about that time period is Marc Morris’ The Norman Conquest. But anything else about eleventh century Europe would be greatly appreciated! Thanks for your time!

Edit: In case anyone comes across this post, I came across a book called The Forge of Christendom by Tom Holland that pretty much turned out to be the exact book I was looking for. It covered pretty much every topic I list here so if anyone else is looking for something similar, that’s my recommendation!