Medieval Europe: A Short History

Medieval Europe: A Short History is justly renowned for its accessible, humane, and humorous style. It tells how the peoples of the medieval West built, understood, and changed their world. Never losing sight of the neighboring civilizations of Byzantium and Islam, it has its feet firmly planted in the medieval West, from whence it gives ample consideration to such subjects as women's lives, Jewish communities, ordinary people, and the experiences of Europeans in the often-neglected centuries of the Later Middle Ages.

New to the Eleventh Edition:

Streamlined early chapters allow students to delve more quickly into Europe after 500 C.E.

Updated and focused discussion of the political history of the Holy Roman Empire.

More images than ever before provide visual aids to enhance comprehension and enrich the main text.

A separate and consolidated treatment of the medieval papacy.

Features:

Chapters are enlivened by visual images, maps, and timelines that summarize key trends and highlight important issues.

Clear, straightforward, and carefully organized chapters aid students in a full and exciting exploration of medieval Europe.

Up-to-date scholarship, especially incorporating the history of women and Jews, gives this text the advantage of being complete and seamless.

Now complemented by a robust, open-access, regularly updated website, MedievalEuropeOnline.com, Medieval Europe: A Short History directly engages students outside the classroom.

The ninth edition has been revised to reflect the latest author's expertise in women's history, social history, and the history of the Later Middle Ages; the text integrates more stories of ordinary people into the narrative, expands coverage of what has been called the "formation of a persecuting society" in the Central Middle Ages, and fills out coverage of later years. Co-author Hollister, who died in 1997, was associated with the U. of California, Santa Barbara; Bennett teaches at the U. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

C. Warren Hollister was Professor Emeritus of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara, received his BA from Harvard University and his MA and PhD from UCLA. A Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America, the Royal Historical Society (London), the Medieval Academy of Ireland, the Australian National University, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and Merton College, Oxford, he was founder and past president of the Charles Homer Haskins Society and served as President of the Pacific Coast Conference on British Studies, the Medieval Association of the Pacific, the American Historical Association, Pacific Coast Branch, the North American Conference on British Studies, and was 1984 Centennial Program Chair of the American Historical Association, Chair of the University of California Press Editorial Board, and Chair of the national Development Committee for the College Board Advanced Placement Test in European History.

Professor Hollister’s many books have run through more than thirty editions and have been translated into several languages. He has also written some fifty articles on medieval history. Professor Hollister has served on numerous editorial boards, including Albion, the American Historical Review, the Journal of British Studies, and the Journal of Mediaeval History. Among Professor Hollister’s other honors were the Centennial Lectureship of the University of Georgia, the 1987 Denis Bethell Memorial Lectureship of the Medieval Academy of Ireland (Dublin), the 1988 Wilkinson Memorial Lectureship of the University of Toronto, the 1990 Lansdowne Lectureship of the University of Victoria, the 1996 Wei Lun Visiting Professorship of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the Triennial Book Prize of the Conference on British Studies, the E. Harris Harbison National Award for Distinguished Teaching (Princeton University), and the UC Santa Barbara Faculty Teaching Prize.

Judith M. Bennett teaches medieval history and women's history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she is Martha Nell Hardy Distinguished Professor. Educated at Mount Holyoke College, the University of Toronto, and the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, she is the author of numerous books and articles about peasants, women, and families in the Middle Ages. Professor Bennett's research has been supported by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Humanities Center, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and numerous other agencies. She has held lectureships in Australia and England, as well as the United States. A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in London, she has held offices in such professional organizations as the Medieval Academy of America, the North American Conference on British Studies, the Coordinating Council for Women in History, and the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians. Professor Bennett has received several awards for her scholarly books and articles, and she is also an acclaimed teacher at UNC-CH, where she has won a top teaching award and is now a fellow of the Academy of Distinguished Teaching Scholars.