Medieval Horizons: Why The Middle Ages Matter

Ian Mortimer

Apr 2024 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Ian Mortimer

About this audiobook

The essential introduction to the Middle Ages by the bestselling author of The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England We tend to think of the Middle Ages as a dark, backward, and unchanging time characterized by violence, ignorance, and superstition. By contrast we believe progress arose from science and technological innovation, and that inventions of recent centuries created the modern world. We couldn't be more wrong. As Ian Mortimer shows in this fascinating book, people's horizons-their knowledge, experience, and understanding of the world-expanded dramatically. Life was utterly transformed between 1000 and 1600, marking the transition from a warrior-led society to that of Shakespeare. Just as The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England revealed what it was like to live in the fourteenth century, Medieval Horizons provides the perfect primer to the era as a whole. It outlines the enormous cultural changes that took place-from literacy to living standards, inequality, and even the developing sense of self-thereby correcting misconceptions and presenting the period as a revolutionary age of fundamental importance in the development of the Western world.

About the author

Ian Mortimer is best known as the author of The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England and The Time Traveler's Guide to Elizabethan England, which were both national bestsellers. Ian was awarded the Alexander Prize by the Royal Historical Society for his work on the social history of medicine. He lives in England.