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Powers and Thrones
by Dan Jones
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Powers and Thrones offers a large-scale history of the Middle Ages, beginning with the transformation of the Roman world and following the political, religious and economic systems that succeeded it. Dan Jones moves across western Europe, Byzantium and the Islamic world while examining Franks, Vikings, monks, knights, merchants, crusaders and Mongols rather than treating medieval history as the story of a single civilisation.
The book explains how institutions such as the papacy, monarchy, lordship, towns and universities developed through conflict and exchange. Crusades, conquest, trade, technological change and the Black Death connect societies that are often narrated separately. Jones closes by showing how the later medieval crises and recoveries helped create the states and cultural movements of the early modern world, while resisting the idea that the period was merely an interval between antiquity and the Renaissance.
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