The Light Ages
The Surprising Story of Medieval Science
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The Light Ages
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Narrated by:
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Seb Falk
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By:
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Seb Falk
About this listen
An illuminating guide to the scientific and technological achievements of the Middle Ages through the life of a crusading astronomer-monk.
Soaring Gothic cathedrals, violent crusades, the Black Death: These are the dramatic forces that shaped the medieval era. But the so-called Dark Ages also gave us the first universities, eyeglasses, and mechanical clocks. As medieval thinkers sought to understand the world around them, from the passing of the seasons to the stars in the sky, they came to develop a vibrant scientific culture.
In The Light Ages, Cambridge science historian Seb Falk takes us on a tour of medieval science through the eyes of one 14th-century monk, John of Westwyk. Born in a rural manor, educated in England's grandest monastery, and then exiled to a clifftop priory, Westwyk was an intrepid crusader, inventor, and astrologer. From multiplying Roman numerals to navigating by the stars, curing disease, and telling time with an ancient astrolabe, we learn emerging science alongside Westwyk and travel with him through the length and breadth of England and beyond its shores. On our way, we encounter a remarkable cast of characters: the clock-building English abbot with leprosy, the French craftsman-turned-spy, and the Persian polymath who founded the world's most advanced observatory.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2020 Seb Falk (P)2020 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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- By: Captivating History
- Narrated by: Kevin Hung-Liang
- Length: 5 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 25
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 24
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 24
If you want to discover the captivating history of the Scientific Revolution, then pay attention...Two captivating manuscripts in one audiobook: The Scientific Revolution: A Captivating Guide to the Emergence of Modern Science During the Early Modern Period, Including Stories of Thinkers Such as Isaac Newton and René Descartes and Galileo Galilei: A Captivating Guide to an Italian Astronomer, Physicist, and Engineer and His Impact on the History of Science. So if you want to learn more about the Scientific Revolution and Galileo Galilei listen to this audiobook now!
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5 out of 5 stars
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great info, worst narratorever.
- By Pat Newell on 08-10-21
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The House of Wisdom
- How Arabic Science Saved Ancient Knowledge and Gave Us the Renaissance
- By: Jim Al-Khalili
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 346
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 308
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 309
The Arabic legacy of science and philosophy has long been hidden from the West. British-Iraqi physicist Jim Al-Khalili unveils that legacy to fascinating effect by returning to its roots in the hubs of Arab innovation that would advance science and jump-start the European Renaissance.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Very interesting book, well-narrated for sure
- By Roderic Rinehart on 11-07-20
By: Jim Al-Khalili
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Isaac Newton
- By: James Gleick
- Narrated by: Allan Corduner
- Length: 5 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 462
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 314
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 313
James Gleick has long been fascinated by the making of science: how ideas order visible appearances, how equations can give meaning to molecular and stellar phenomena, how theories can transform what we see. In Chaos, he chronicled the emergence of a new way of looking at dynamic systems; in Genius, he portrayed the wondrous dimensions of Richard Feymnan's mind.
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1 out of 5 stars
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BRUTAL
- By Andrew on 05-25-05
By: James Gleick
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Galileo Galilei
- A Captivating Guide to an Italian Astronomer, Physicist, and Engineer and His Impact on the History of Science
- By: Captivating History
- Narrated by: Kevin Hung-Liang
- Length: 2 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 26
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 24
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Story5 out of 5 stars 24
Galileo Galilei’s contributions to modern science were so fundamental to a variety of fields that even though he died almost 400 years ago, his name retains international acclaim. This 17th-century natural philosopher is often credited with the invention of the telescope, thanks to his many discoveries using that specific instrument, and though he was not, in fact, its inventor, the myth still persists.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Supposed to be the Age of Common Sense
- By Dianne E Parks on 03-26-20
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The Genesis of Science
- How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution
- By: James Hannam
- Narrated by: Rich Germaine
- Length: 13 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 63
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 58
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 58
If you were taught that the Middle Ages were a time of intellectual stagnation, superstition, and ignorance, you were taught a myth that has been utterly refuted by modern scholarship. As a physicist and historian of science James Hannam shows in his brilliant new book, The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution, without the scholarship of the "barbaric" Middle Ages, modern science simply would not exist. The Middle Ages were a time of one intellectual triumph after another.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Insightful!
- By John on 07-07-15
By: James Hannam
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The House of Wisdom
- How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization
- By: Jonathan Lyons
- Narrated by: Jay Snyder
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 107
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 71
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Story4 out of 5 stars 70
Here is the remarkable story of how medieval Arab scholars made dazzling advances in science and philosophy, and of the itinerant Europeans who brought this knowledge back to the West. For centuries following the fall of Rome, Western Europe was a benighted backwater, a world of subsistence farming, minimal literacy, and violent conflict. Meanwhile, Arab culture was thriving, dazzling those Europeans fortunate enough to catch even a glimpse.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Missing history
- By Robert on 11-26-11
By: Jonathan Lyons
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The Map of Knowledge
- A Thousand-Year History of How Classical Ideas Were Lost and Found
- By: Violet Moller
- Narrated by: Susan Duerden
- Length: 8 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 106
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 87
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 86
The foundations of modern knowledge - philosophy, math, astronomy, geography - were laid by the Greeks, whose ideas were written on scrolls and stored in libraries across the Mediterranean and beyond. But as the vast Roman Empire disintegrated, so did appreciation of these precious texts. Christianity cast a shadow over so-called pagan thought, books were burned, and the library of Alexandria, the greatest repository of classical knowledge, was destroyed. Yet some texts did survive and The Map of Knowledge explores the role played by seven cities around the Mediterranean....
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3 out of 5 stars
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Terrible narration.
- By nathan535 on 11-05-19
By: Violet Moller
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Knowing What We Know
- The Transmission of Knowledge: From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 142
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 111
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 111
From the creation of the first encyclopedia to Wikipedia, from ancient museums to modern kindergarten classes—this is Simon Winchester’s brilliant and all-encompassing look at how humans acquire, retain, and pass on information and data, and how technology continues to change our lives and our minds. Throughout this fascinating tour, Winchester forces us to ponder what rational humans are becoming. What good is all this knowledge if it leads to lack of thought? What is information without wisdom?
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3 out of 5 stars
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Colorful anecdotes but tiring after a while.
- By reader on 05-03-23
By: Simon Winchester
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The Clockwork Universe
- Isaac Newton, The Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World
- By: Edward Dolnick
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 3,892
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 3,313
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Story4 out of 5 stars 3,325
The Clockwork Universe is the story of a band of men who lived in a world of dirt and disease but pictured a universe that ran like a perfect machine. A meld of history and science, this book is a group portrait of some of the greatest minds who ever lived as they wrestled with natures most sweeping mysteries. The answers they uncovered still hold the key to how we understand the world.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Calculus Ergo Modernity
- By Nelson Alexander on 07-09-11
By: Edward Dolnick
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The Writing of the Gods
- The Race to Decode the Rosetta Stone
- By: Edward Dolnick
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 173
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 140
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 139
The Rosetta Stone is one of the most famous objects in the world, attracting millions of visitors to the British museum every year, and yet most people don’t really know what it is. Discovered in a pile of rubble in 1799, this slab of stone proved to be the key to unlocking a lost language that baffled scholars for centuries.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Hieroglyphs For The People
- By Spike on 01-15-22
By: Edward Dolnick
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The Seashell on the Mountaintop
- By: Alan Cutler
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 5 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 178
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 61
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 61
A thrilling scientific investigation and the portrait of an extraordinary genius, The Seashell on the Mountaintop gives us new insight into our planet, revealing how we learned to read the story told to us by the Earth itself, written in rock and stone.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Not to be missed
- By Vanessa on 10-22-03
By: Alan Cutler
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A Most Elegant Equation
- Euler’s Formula and the Beauty of Mathematics
- By: David Stipp
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 5 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 306
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 274
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Story4 out of 5 stars 271
Bertrand Russell wrote that mathematics can exalt "as surely as poetry". This is especially true of one equation: ei(pi) + 1 = 0, the brainchild of Leonhard Euler, the Mozart of mathematics. More than two centuries after Euler's death, it is still regarded as a conceptual diamond of unsurpassed beauty. Called Euler's identity, or God's equation, it includes just five numbers but represents an astonishing revelation of hidden connections.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Good treatment of the subject
- By Kindle Customer on 04-09-18
By: David Stipp
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The Invention of Science
- A New History of the Scientific Revolution
- By: David Wootton
- Narrated by: James Langton
- Length: 22 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 134
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 120
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 121
In this fascinating history spanning continents and centuries, historian David Wootton offers a lively defense of science, revealing why the Scientific Revolution was truly the greatest event in our history. The Invention of Science goes back 500 years in time to chronicle this crucial transformation, exploring the factors that led to its birth and the people who made it happen. Wootton argues that the Scientific Revolution was actually five separate yet concurrent events that developed independently.
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2 out of 5 stars
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A Good Read Spoiled
- By David A. Donnelly on 12-23-16
By: David Wootton
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The Human Cosmos
- Civilization and the Stars
- By: Jo Marchant
- Narrated by: Jo Marchant
- Length: 11 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 206
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 175
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 174
For at least 20,000 years, we have led not just an earthly existence, but a cosmic one. Celestial cycles drove every aspect of our daily lives. Our innate relationship with the stars shaped who we are - our art, religious beliefs, social status, scientific advances, and even our biology. But over the last few centuries we have separated ourselves from the universe that surrounds us. It's a disconnect with a dire cost.
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5 out of 5 stars
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This book has changed the way I think about my own mortality!
- By Jerry on 02-04-21
By: Jo Marchant
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The Fourth Part of the World
- The Race to the Ends of the Earth
- By: Toby Lester
- Narrated by: Peter Jay Fernandez
- Length: 15 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 72
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 45
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Story4 out of 5 stars 46
Brimming with enthralling details and personalities, Toby Lester's The Fourth Part of the World spotlights Martin Waldseemüller's 1507 world map and recounts the epic tale of the mariners and scholars who facilitated this watershed of Western history.
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5 out of 5 stars
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I enjoyed it
- By Todd on 07-19-10
By: Toby Lester
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Euclid's Window
- The Story of Geometry from Parallel Lines to Hyperspace
- By: Leonard Mlodinow
- Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 594
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 420
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 422
Through Euclid's Window Leonard Mlodinow brilliantly and delightfully leads us on a journey through five revolutions in geometry, from the Greek concept of parallel lines to the latest notions of hyperspace. Here is an altogether new, refreshing, alternative history of math revealing how simple questions anyone might ask about space -- in the living room or in some other galaxy -- have been the hidden engine of the highest achievements in science and technology.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wow!
- By Eric on 08-13-10
By: Leonard Mlodinow
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The Riddle of the Labyrinth
- The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code
- By: Margalit Fox
- Narrated by: Pam Ward
- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 148
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 134
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Story4 out of 5 stars 133
In the tradition of Simon Winchester and Dava Sobel, The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code tells one of the most intriguing stories in the history of language, masterfully blending history, linguistics, and cryptology with an elegantly wrought narrative. When famed archaeologist Arthur Evans unearthed the ruins of a sophisticated Bronze Age civilization that flowered on Crete 1,000 years before Greece's Classical Age, he discovered a cache of ancient tablets, Europe's earliest written records.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Discovery and Translation of Linear B Script
- By Sires on 01-11-14
By: Margalit Fox
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The Bright Ages
- A New History of Medieval Europe
- By: Matthew Gabriele, David M. Perry
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 227
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The word medieval conjures images of the “Dark Ages”. But the myth of darkness obscures the truth; this was a remarkable period in human history. The Bright Ages recasts the European Middle Ages for what it was, capturing this 1,000-year era in all its complexity and fundamental humanity, bringing to light both its beauty and its horrors. The Bright Ages takes us through 10 centuries and crisscrosses Europe and the Mediterranean, Asia, and Africa, revisiting familiar people and events with new light cast upon them.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Does exactly what it claims to clarify
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