I've just finished and enjoyed Charles Manns 1491 and 1493 and enjoyed the deconstruction of many false conceptions about the Americas in poplar thought. Recently I've also become more interested in European miedival history, especially because there seems to be an astounding amount of misconceptions about those times aswell. From the myths about the dark ages, to the misconceptions about feudalism, hygiene, gender and day-today life.
Do you have any recomendations for books about the Middle Ages? I know they span 1000 years and an entire continent, so I'm not just looking for one single book, just some good books to start. They also be more specific at times, for example I'm interested in Germaica slavica and that whole story.
Incredibly Narrow Niche Recommendation Because I Have A Schtick And BY GOD Sir I Will Live Up To It:
Water Technology in the Middle Ages: Cities, Monasteries, and Waterworks after the Roman Empire, Roberta J Magnusson, 2001. You will encounter the Pop-Cultural Myth that the Medievals did not drink water because it was polluted, and so drank alcoholic drinks instead. Magnusson outlines the water infrastructure available to the monasteries and cities of the Middle Ages, and also includes quite a few lovely details. It's a good-news-bad-news situation for poor William Campion - Magnusson includes his case before the aldermen of London in 1478, but also what happened to him afterwards, so Mr Campion will live on forever...
Ale, Beer, and Brewsters in England Womens Work in a Changing World, 1300-1600, by Judith M Bennett, 1996. Yet despite the above and my insistence that the Medievals did drink water, we cannot overlook the role of alcohol in the day-to-day Medieval experience. Bennett uses this as a lens to examine women's work. I need to re-read it since I stopped partway through, but it's a most excellent book.
The Ties That Bound: Peasant Families in Medieval England, Barbara A Hanawalt, 1986. I have been meaning to return to this book as I'm only partway through, but I love every single bit of it so far. The problem with a lot of societies, we just don't have the source base to discuss what the average family was like, and thus we are left only with a picture of the elites. Hanawalt sets out to rectify this problem for Medieval England.
Hi, yes, there are many good books on this period -- our Books and Resources List may be of interest to you.
In addition to all the incredible recommendations you've already received, your interest in Charles Mann's works leads me to suggest Geraldine Heng, The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (2018). It's a very dense read, but it will give you a richer understanding of European ideas about race and how they eventually transformed after the increased contact between hemispheres into the early modern.
Germania Slavica
If you can read books written in German, I'd especially recommend some of Christian Lübke's books, such as Die Deutschen und das europäische Mittelalter: Bd. 2: Das östliche Europa, Berlin: Siedler, 2004.
While there are certainly more and more newer books of the Obotrites-Wends published in English (especially highly academic ones), the research tradition of German scholars like Herbert Ludat and Joachim Hermann had still dominated this field of research for long.
The following list consists of some more books related to the topic (Germania Slavica) mainly in English, in addition to Christiansen's Northern Crusades, fundamental of the related theme (Baltic Crusades):