Readings - A History of the Middle Ages

I've seemingly become quite the dork in the past few years and I've been reading a lot of history, especially ancient history. I think this interested sparked because of our visits to Aachen, Rome and Paris. In any case, over the holiday I finished reading A History of the Middle Ages by Joseph Dahmus.

I picked up this book while browsing the isles at Barnes & Noble. The broad title grabbed my attention and the "Bargain Bin" price sold it for me, so I snagged it up. As one might imagine, the book is a bit of a slow read, but it was interesting enough and I learned and have forgotten more than I could've imagined about the middle ages. What I found most interesting about the book was that a significant portion was dedicated to the decline of Rome and the related rise of Byzantium, which preceded the fuzzy delineation that is the beginning of the middle ages. I now have a much better understanding and appreciation of the Byzantine art style that I never quite understood before.

The obvious bits of the book revolve around medieval society. The feudal lifestyle: serfs, lords and the whole bit. Apparently, the dark ages were quite dark, at least intellectually. This is the standard fair in most text books, but the book goes into quite a bit of detail. The list of kings, queens and emperors is quite extensive as well, but most of the names flew by. The French and the English seemed to be at each other constantly. The Germanic tribes seemed to be rather unorganized during this period. The strength and influence of the Islamic nations was something I certainly wasn't aware of, especially on the Iberian peninsula.