Especially now.” - The Toronto Globe and Mail “Gabriele and Perry’s new look at an old time is welcome. with passion and verve, the reader to tackle assumptions, bias and prejudices about the past to create a more joined-up, inclusive picture of the thousand years that followed the sack of Rome.' - The Guardian

'This revisionist history of medieval Europe takes apart the myth of a savage, primitive period. They were, in essence, human.' - Boston Globe

'Incandescent and ultimately intoxicating, for as the chapters progress, it dawns on the reader that those who lived in this period were more conventional than cardboard figures. You can tell how much the authors love the subject matter, and that they had a great time choosing stories to share and evidence to consider.” - Slate I found myself at the end of chapters faster than I wanted to be, completely drawn in by the narrative. The Bright Ages is written in such an engaging and light manner that it is easy to race through. “While all of this is the sort of stuff that professional medievalists love to see, the thing I like most about Perry and Gabriele’s effort is that it is fun. The Middle Ages may have been a world “lit only by fire” but it was one whose torches illuminated the magnificent rose windows of cathedrals, even as they stoked the pyres of accused heretics. The Bright Ages reminds us just how permeable our manmade borders have always been and of what possible worlds the past has always made available to us. We begin under a blanket of golden stars constructed by an empress with Germanic, Roman, Spanish, Byzantine, and Christian bloodlines and end nearly 1,000 years later with the poet Dante-inspired by that same twinkling celestial canopy-writing an epic saga of heaven and hell that endures as a masterpiece of literature today. We look with fresh eyes on the Fall of Rome, Charlemagne, the Vikings, the Crusades, and the Black Death, but also to the multi-religious experience of Iberia, the rise of Byzantium, and the genius of Hildegard and the power of queens. The Bright Ages takes us through ten centuries and crisscrosses Europe and the Mediterranean, Asia and Africa, revisiting familiar people and events with new light cast upon them. The Bright Ages recasts the European Middle Ages for what it was, capturing this 1,000-year era in all its complexity and fundamental humanity, bringing to light both its beauty and its horrors. But the myth of darkness obscures the truth this was a remarkable period in human history. The word “medieval” conjures images of the “Dark Ages”-centuries of ignorance, superstition, stasis, savagery, and poor hygiene.

A lively and magisterial popular history that refutes common misperceptions of the European Middle Ages, showing the beauty and communion that flourished alongside the dark brutality-a brilliant reflection of humanity itself.

Real life roman brandon taylor