Top 3-5 Medieval Europe Books published since 2000

While R.W. Southern, Johan Huizinga, Marc Bloch, Joseph R. Strayer, and Jacques Le Goff all routinely (and presumably rightfully) make the list of top authors on Medieval Europe, I am curious to hear your thoughts on which modern-day authors deserve to join their ranks. In particular, which 3-5 books on Medieval Europe written since 2000 should be read by all budding medievalists? Just by what I have seen in bookstores and mentioned on blogs, I would think the following authors might be candidates for inclusion on this list: David Abulafia, Thomas Asbridge, and Roger Crowley, but I defer to those more knowledgeable than I.

One place to start would be the winners of the Haskins Medal, awarded by the Medieval Academy each year to the author of the book judged to be the most distinguished in medieval studies.

In accord with that list, and noting that not a single woman appears in your list of folks, I would nominate the following (in no particular order):

Caroline Walker Bynum, each of whose books going back to the blockbuster Holy Feast and Holy Fast (1987) is firmly established in the pantheon of medieval studies. She won the 2011 Haskins medal for Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany (2007).

Barbara Newman. I'm a Hildegard of Bingen scholar, so obviously I'm biased by her work there (Sister of Wisdom, edition of the Symphonia, etc.). But it's her penetrating work, God and the Goddesses: Vision, Poetry, and Belief in the Middle Ages (2005) that earned her the 2009 medal (even if her ideas on the interplay of poetry, visual art, and mystical vision had already been adumbrated by Jeffrey Hamburger in the '90's essays collected in The Visual and the Visionary {1998}).

Jeffrey Hamburger: even though The Visual and the Visionary and Nuns as Artists both came out in the late '90's, I still think he deserves a place on this list. The Mind's Eye: Art and Theological Argument in the Middle Ages (2006), which he edited, is an excellent affirmation of methods he pioneered. He's the only one on my list that hasn't received a Haskins, however.

Kathryn Kerby-Fulton: her thus-far distinguished career was built on two nodes: prophecy and apocalypticism (in Hildegardiana and Joachimism), and fourteenth-century English literature, especially in Langland. That all came together in her most recent and amazing book, Books Under Suspicion (2006), which has exploded long-held assumptions of English reception of radical eschatology and mysticism. It won the 2010 medal. (Full disclosure: Kerby-Fulton was my graduate advisor at Notre Dame.)

Mary Carruthers: The Book of Memory (1990) quickly and rightly made its way onto every graduate student's reading list, and her 2000 follow-up, The Craft of Thought earned her the 2003 medal.

Brian Tierney: His long and distinguished career as a legal historian received recognition with the 2001 medal for the impressive work in The Idea of Natural Rights (1997). But since that came out before 2000, it does not, perhaps meet the criteria of the list.

Oh, one more (I know, I'm past 3-5). That would be Thomas Bisson. Even though he won the Haskins way back in 1989 for his work on Fiscal Accounts of Catalonia, his last and magnum opus has quickly become a game-changer for twelfth-century folks: The Crisis of the Twelfth Century (2009).

>1 asabel: There is a certain tension between the scholars listed on your first line and the authors of popular books on the last line (in my view, Crowley's East vs West approach is too much colored by current events).

As a book's topic is decisive in the scholarly literature, I like to promote as an addition to the second group of authors, for the general reader, the works of Juliet Barker and an excellent introductory book about Late Medieval England, The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England (Mortimer's other books are somewhat hit-and-miss and cannot be recommended unseen).

#2, thank you for the exhaustive list and for letting me know about the Haskins Medal. I wasn't thinking about gender when I made my list, but thanks for all the female historians, too.

#3, I have read Agincourt by Juliet Barker and thoroughly enjoyed it. What do you mean by tension between the first list and the second? The first are more academic and the second more popular? Point taken on Crowely -- what about the others?

>4 asabel: Yes, academic vs. popular history, nothing wrong with either, just wanted to inquire about your focus. Huizinga, Bloch and Le Goff influenced history and other disciplines, a task that has become much more difficult since, as public awareness beyond knights, men-in-tights and damsel in distress is rather limited.

The major difference is price. Amazon wants 21 USD for a PB "Wonderful Blood" (linked above) while Barker's Agincourt costs (a rather pricey) USD 11 (much cheaper in the UK).

My main gripe, though, is the huge area "medieval" (both temporal and spatial) encompasses. Bookdepository and Amazon are really awfully unhelpful in their medieval categories (if, like me, your focus is on Late Medieval/Renaissance which is as far removed from the (core) Crusades as the Napoleonic Wars are from WWII).

The huge area covered makes any generalization difficult. "The Crisis of the Twelfth Century" (which I haven't read) seems to skirt Central Europe whose founding spirit of cities and churches was partly responsible for the good name of the century. The impotence of central rulers allowed the periphery to blossom.

>5 jcbrunner:, Re: The Crisis of the Twelfth Century:
Bisson's specialty is Iberia and the Crown of Aragon, and the book spends most of its time in those areas, the various duchies of France (and french royal demesne), England, and the Low Countries, with some excursions into Italy and Germany and a less-than-skillful attempt at positing the Papacy as a control case. And what you'll see is that the "impotence" of central administration in those areas is precisely at the center of Bisson's argument.

His dialogue is much more with the lines of thought represented by Joseph R. Strayer's On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State and M. T. Clanchy's From Memory to Written Record. Bisson takes the older paradigm (articulated by Strayer) of governmental development and problematizes it, pointing out just how messy the whole situation was throughout the long twelfth century and pushing the development of functional centralized power structures well into the thirteenth century.

Your point of view seems to be following Robert Bartlett's The Making of Europe, which articulates precisely that give-and-take relationship between center and periphery, between central powers and colonial frontiers. Bisson isn't really in dialogue with Bartlett's (persuasive, in my opinion) thesis, primarily because he's tackling "the Origins of European Government", which places him squarely in the areas that would become the central monarchies, and because that development precedes both chronologically and thematically the bulk of Bartlett's treatment.

>6 nathanielcampbell: Thanks, added the book to my giant TBR list.

From my Central European POV (Switzerland, Austria, Germany), I wouldn't dare to speak of a "centralized power structure" until well into the 19th century, with mostly nominal control at best, in a management-by-helicopter approach ("Stay as high above the ground as possible. Land from time to time, stir up the place by blowing up huge clouds of dust and take off again. That'll keep them busy for a while.") in an empty land.

The very confines of England made centralized rule (can one really call it government?) easier to establish and sustain. The puzzle of the 12th century onwards is why rulers, given the obvious technological and manpower constraints, tried to rule over vast areas they couldn't control effectively, time and again. The empire bug is strong ...

I'm going to throw in what I consider the 2 (not 3) best for the Early Medieval Period. I think for that reason they're probably DQ'd from this thread's purpose but they are outstanding.

McCormick's Origins of the European Economy and Wickham's Framing the Early Middle Ages. If you have an interest in Early Medieval/Late Antiquity I think you really need to read these (not as your first book though). They look expensive but both are in the thousand-word range. I'd like to find a used hardcover of Wickham myself - I refer to it so much that my pb is showing a lot of wear.

>8 cemanuel:: Even though I'm not an early MA expert, I second these choices.

A more popular book by Wickham is The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000.

Inheritance is very good but for some reason he didn't footnote it. In the text he said it was so he wouldn't disturb the narrative which always seems a goofy reason to me - if someone wants to read it for narrative flow, ignore the fn's.

I left some comments about it on my blog if you want more details:

http://medievalhistorygeek.blogspot.com/2010/03/chris-wickham-inheritance-of-rom...

I don't respect books with no footnotes, no matter who writes them 8-)

12 > At times it is the publisher, not the author, who makes the decision to forgo footnotes. The publisher may decide that the book will sell best if marketed to a popular audience who, conventional wisdom dictates, don't want footnotes. So it's not always dodgy authorship.

That's what's going on in this case. "The Inheritance of Rome" is part of the Penguin History of Europe series, which, like the Penguin History of Britain series, is deliberately designed to have no footnotes. It was entirely the decision of Penguin, which commissioned the books.

Whether it's the decision of author or publisher, to me the lack of footnotes means lack of respect for the subject and the reader.

15 > In the publisher's case, the bottom line is the bottom line. If they think they will sell more copies without footnotes, that's how the book will be published.

Unfortunately, in Inheritance Wickham wrote as if the decision to not include footnotes was his, at least partially. There also is no a bibliography - not what I'd call one anyway.

I have a hard time figuring out why Wickham would take the blame for the lack of fn's if this was entirely the publisher's decision. It's not like he's having a hard time getting stuff into print.