History That Rattles

Gripping Microhistories of Medieval Europe, Epidemics, and the Dark Origins of Medicine

Before modern science, survival was a long shot.

What if the most gripping stories in European history weren’t wars or kings—but the quiet, relentless struggle of ordinary people trying to stay alive?

History That Rattles tells the story of how Europeans lived, suffered, adapted, and survived from the Middle Ages to the dawn of modern medicine. It follows humanity at its most vulnerable, when climate turned hostile, disease spread without explanation, and the human body became a fragile experiment with no safety net.

When winters grew longer and harvests failed, fear shaped belief.
When illness struck, medicine often hurt as much as it healed.
When answers were missing, people filled the gaps with faith, tradition, and accusation—sometimes with devastating consequences.

This book explores the forces that decided who lived and who didn’t: climate, epidemics, early medical practices, economic pressure, and the ideas people clung to when survival depended on chance as much as knowledge. These stories don’t glorify the past or reduce it to horror—they reveal how people made sense of a world that offered no guarantees.

Written by historian Barbora Jirincová, History That Rattles combines solid research with vivid, human storytelling. It’s for readers who want history that is precise without being dry, and unsettling without being sensational.

After this book, medieval Europe won’t feel distant or abstract anymore—it will feel uncomfortably close.

Buy History That Rattles and cut deep into the history shaped not by victory, but by survival itself.