Cover of A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance: Portrait of an Age

A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance: Portrait of an Age

From tales of chivalrous knights to the barbarity of trial by ordeal, no era has been a greater source of awe, horror, and wonder than the Middle Ages. In handsomely crafted prose, and with the grace and authority of his extraordinary gift for narrative history, William Manchester leads us from a civilization tottering on the brink of collapse to the grandeur of its rebirth - the dense explosion of energy that spawned some of history's greatest poets, philosophers, painters, adventurers, and reformers, as well as some of its most spectacular villains - the Renaissance.

Audience
adult
Length
medium · 322 pages

Click a tag to see books like this one that share it. Point at it (on a phone, tap it) for less of it instead.

Read it? Sign in to help tag it.

Liked A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance: Portrait of an Age? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance: Portrait of an Age. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. The Civilization of the Middle Ages Shares history, nonfiction, hist
  2. 1066: The Year of the Conquest Shares history, nonfiction, hist
  3. The History of the Medieval World: From the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade Shares history, nonfiction, hist
  4. Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel: Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages Shares history, nonfiction, medieval

“People who read A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance: Portrait of an Age tend to reach for these next.”

  1. Wicked History Of The World
  2. Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance
  3. The Waning of the Middle Ages
  4. The Black Death

“If you want more of the same (history), start with these.”

  1. In Search of the Dark Ages
  2. Millennium: The End of the World and the Forging of Christendom
  3. The King in the North: The Life and Times of Oswald of Northumbria
  4. Templars: The Dramatic History of the Knights Templar, the Most Powerful Military Order of the Crusades

“If it was the hist that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century
  2. In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World It Made
  3. Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe
  4. Europe

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. The Greatest Knight: The Remarkable Life of William Marshal, The Power Behind Five English Thrones
  2. Poland: A History
  3. The Infinite Cosmos: Questions from the Frontiers of Cosmology
  4. Free onlineFree King Arthur and His Knights