Medieval Nonfiction

What if everything you were told about Viking democracy was a lie sold by men with swords? The bestselling myth says the Vikings built one of history's first parliaments. The evidence says they built a protection racket and called it law. In Outlaw Country, historian and narrative nonfiction author Tomas Somerled delivers a cynical, ferociously researched investigation into the real Viking legal system — the chieftains who bought their authority like livestock, the witnesses bribed at feasts the week before trial, the blood feuds that incinerated entire families across generations, and ...

From the schism between Rome and Constantinople to the rise of the T'ang Dynasty, from the birth of Muhammad to the crowning of Charlemagne, this erudite book tells the fascinating, often violent story of kings, generals, and the peoples they ruled.

We tend to think of the Middle Ages as a dark, backward, and unchanging time characterized by violence, ignorance, and superstition. By contrast, we believe progress arose from science and technological innovation, and that inventions of recent centuries created the modern world. We couldn't be more wrong.

The millennium between the breakup of the western Roman Empire and the Reformation was a long and hugely transformative period - one not easily chronicled within a single book. Yet distinguished historian Chris Wickham has taken up the challenge in this landmark book, and he succeeds in producing the most riveting account of medieval Europe in a generation.

The Wolf Age takes listeners on a thrilling journey through the bloody shared history of England and Scandinavia, and on across early medieval Europe, from the wild Norwegian fjords to the wealthy cities of Muslim Andalusia. Warfare, plotting, backstabbing, and bribery abound as Tore Skeie skillfully weaves sagas and skaldic poetry with breathless dramatization as he entertainingly brings the world of the Vikings and Anglo-Saxons to vivid life.

Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Justin Avoth and Laurence Dobiesz. This definitive recording includes an introduction by Christopher Rowe read by Justin Avoth. 'Consider just this, and give your minds to this alone: whether or not what I say is just' Plato's...

For 700 years, Japan was ruled by military commanders who waged war against one another incessantly. Shogun tells the fascinating story of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the man who finally unified and brought lasting peace to the nation. He established a new central government which enabled his descendants to rule Japan for the next 260 years—a period in which Japanese culture as we know it today flourished.

In a single lifetime, a starving outcast on the Mongolian steppe built the largest contiguous land empire in history—and stitched the medieval world together for the first time. We call it the Pax Mongolica: a century when a rider could travel from the Yellow Sea to the gates of Europe under one law, on one network of roads. Goods, gunpowder, paper money, printing, and ideas moved faster and farther than ever before. So did the Black Death. The first true world-system was not built by Europe. It was built by nomads on horseback—and it carried both prosperity and plague along the same ...

A Medieval Life offers a biography of one woman, a portrait of her world, and an introduction to historical method. Written in a clear and accessible style, it reworks a well-loved book to provide an entirely new resource for students, teachers, and general listeners. Like Cecilia Penifader, most people in the Middle Ages were peasants, humble people living socially below the knights, bishops, and kings who figure so large in history books. Judith M. Bennett shows that peasants, too, made history.

The shocking, brutal truth behind Viking history that the sagas refused to show you. Are you tired of sanitized tales of majestic warriors? Smothered in the Hall: The Brutal Reality of Viking Sleep uncovers the terrifying, untold history of how the Norsemen actually lived and barely survived the Scandinavian night. Step inside the Iron Age longhouse, not as a cozy sanctuary, but as a compromised containment vessel of overlapping hazards. Through the rigorous "Nocturnal Biocontainment Framework," this book exposes how the architecture of the Viking home actively weaponized the winter against...

Discover the dark, starving truth behind the most misunderstood warriors in history. For centuries, Victorian nationalists, romantic poets, and Hollywood screenwriters have spoon-fed us a narrative of the Viking Age characterized by excess vitality and hyper-masculine energy. We are taught to view the raids on Lindisfarne and Paris as the arrogant flex of an unstoppable, well-fed military machine. Tomas Somerled’s BONE-THIN RAIDERS dismantles this retroactive propaganda piece by piece. Through a rigorous, multidisciplinary forensic investigation known as the Metabolic Trauma Protocol, ...

Shatter the Myths of Valhalla and Discover the Blood-Soaked Reality of Viking Medicine For centuries, the history of Norse healers has been sanitized, replacing the grim reality of battlefield triage with romantic tales of ethereal maidens and mystical forest herbs. In The Butcher's Apothecary: Blood, Fat, and the Brutal Reality of Viking Medicine, Tomas Somerled expertly dismantles this historical propaganda to reveal the horrific, unsterilized mechanics of ancient survival. This immersive and deeply visceral exploration of medieval combat medicine leaves the polite academic distance ...

A Waterstones Best History Book 2025 A BBC History Magazine Book of the Year 2025 ‘Learned, entertaining and highly approachable’ BOB MORTIMER ‘A treat’ ALICE LOXTON ‘Five stars from me…’ AL MURRAY An unmissable collaboration between two comedy legends – an irresistible...

Discover the dark history behind Dracula before he became a vampire. Order of the Dragon: Vlad Țepeș, Romanian Mysteries, and the Birth of Dracula explores the real-world origins of the Dracula legend through the Order of the Dragon, Vlad the Impaler, Saint George, Romanian folklore, strigoi beliefs, blood symbolism, and the Gothic imagination that transformed a Wallachian prince into an immortal icon. This compact historical and esoteric study follows Vlad Țepeș from dynastic danger and Ottoman captivity to brutal kingship, battlefield terror, imprisonment, and legend. It also examines...

The romanticized Viking saga is a comforting lie. Discover the brutal reality of the 793 AD Lindisfarne raid. In Wolves on the Tide: The Slaughter of Lindisfarne, Tomas Somerled dismantles the heroic myths of the Norsemen to present a gritty, historically uncompromising autopsy of the attack that ignited the Viking Age. For the monks of St. Cuthbert’s sanctuary, the ocean was an impenetrable divine wall. They possessed no early warning systems and no defensive naval patrols. On June 8, 793, that profound geographical delusion invited their total annihilation. Introducing The Asymmetric ...

Unearth the Gritty, Squalid Reality Behind the Myth of the Clean Northman For too long, the modern imagination has been hijacked by a sanitized, impossibly clean vision of the Viking Age. Popular culture has painted the Northman as a proto-metrosexual warrior who bathed weekly and smelled of pine needles. Winter's Itch: The Filth, Frost, and Fleas of the Real Viking Age shatters this comforting illusion. Author Tomas Somerled employs a rigorous "Pathology of the Hearth" framework to treat the medieval living conditions not as polite history, but as a biological crime scene. Prepare for a ...

Blood and Treasure is the story of the economics of conflict from the Viking Age to the war in Ukraine. 'Absolutely fascinating and totally absorbing' JAMES HOLLAND 'A brilliant book' MARTIN WOLF, FINANCIAL TIMES CHIEF ECONOMICS EDITOR 'Chock full of marvellous nuggets, this fascinating book is...

Discover the brutal, unvarnished truth of Viking-era medicine and battlefield survival. For generations, the Norse sagas and modern mythmakers have fed us a sanitized fantasy of the unfeeling Viking berserker. Beyond the Shield-Wall: The Savage Medicine and Silent Agony of the Viking Age by Tomas Somerled completely shatters this cinematic lie. This immersive historical nonfiction book plunges you into the terrifying reality of 9th-century warfare, revealing the horrific trauma and crude medical interventions that defined survival in the Dark Ages. The Norse did not possess a magical ...

Power can be seized through force, inherited by birth, or manufactured through alliance, but it survives only as long as it is perceived as legitimate. In The Right to Rule, Jenny Crossan examines the lives of six historically consequential women to explore how authority is constructed, defended, challenged, and ultimately lost. From Eleanor of Aquitaine and Empress Matilda to Margaret of Anjou and Marie Antoinette, each chapter reveals the fragile relationship between power and legitimacy within unstable courts, contested dynasties, and fractured political systems. This is not simply a ...

Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is narrated by Singer/Songwriter and folk-punk icon Frank Turner. Frank Turner has released eight solo studio albums, the most recent of which was No Man's Land, which contained songs celebrating some of the most important women throughout history...