I was a little skeptical at first, because that’s a really broad scope and broad history books are prone to inaccuracies.

Not so here.

Wickham has done the research and then set out to explain why most of our assumptions about medieval Europe are wrong, starting with the general concept of the period as something with clear start and endpoints. The layout is roughly chronological, but each chapter focuses on a theme–so politics from 900-1100, followed by eastern Europe, 800-1300. For example. It means that regularly I’m going “wait, didn’t he come up before??” but the book has a good index and Wickham is reasonably consistent about acknowledging when someone was referenced in a previous chapter.

Overall, an incredibly coherent and well researched look at a thousand years of European history (with regular reference to the fact that people existed outside of Europe). Definitely keeping it, and definitely a rec.