A fine guide to the Latin West (including its ties to eastern Europe, Africa, and the Middle East) is Robert Fossier, ed., The Cambridge Illustrated History of the Middle Ages, vol. 3, 1250-1520 (1986). George Holmes, Europe: Hierarchy and Revolt, 1320-1450, 2nd ed. (2000), and Denys Hay, Europe in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, 2nd ed. (1989), are comprehensive overviews. For the West’s economic revival and growth, see Robert S. Lopez, The Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages, 950-1350 (1976), and Harry A. Miskimin, The Economy of Early Renaissance Europe, 1300-1460 (1975). For greater detail, see The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 5, c. 1198-c. 1300, ed. D. Abulafia (1999); vol. 6, c. 1300-c. 1415, ed. M. Jones (2000); and vol. 7, c. 1415-c. 1500, ed. C. Allmand (1998).
For fascinating primary sources, see James Bruce Ross and Mary Martin McLaughlin, eds., The Portable Medieval Reader (1977) and The Portable Renaissance Reader (1977). The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, ed. Pamela Taylor (1960), show this versatile genius at work.
Technological change is surveyed by Arnold Pacey, The Maze of Ingenuity: Ideas and Idealism in the Development of Technology (1974); Jean Gimpel, The Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages (1977); and William H. McNeill, The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society Since a. d. 1000 (1982). For a key aspect of the environment, see Roland Bech-mann, Trees and Man: The Forest in the Middle Ages (1990).
Charles Homer Haskins, The Rise of the Universities (1923; reprint, 1957), is a brief, lighthearted introduction; more detailed and scholarly is Olef Pedersen, The First Universities: Studium Gen-erale and the Origins of University Education in Europe (1998). Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924), is the classic account of the “mind” of the fifteenth century. A multitude of works deal with the Renaissance, but few in any broad historical context. Lisa Jardine, Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance (1996), is well illustrated and balanced; see also John R. Hale, The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance (1995).
For social history see Georges Duby, Rural Economy and Country Life in the Medieval West (1990); for the earlier centuries. George Huppert, After the Black Death: A Social History of Early Modern Europe (1986), takes the analysis past 1500. Brief lives of individuals are found in Eileen Power, Medieval People, new ed.
(1997) , and Frances Gies and Joseph Gies, Women in the Middle Ages (1978). More systematic are the essays in Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski, eds., Women and Power in the Middle Ages (1988). Vita Sackville-West, Saint Joan of Arc (1926; reprint, 1991), is a readable introduction to this extraordinary person.
Key events in the Anglo-French dynastic conflict are examined by Christopher Alland, The Hundred Years War: England and France at War, ca. 1300-ca. 1450 (1988). Joseph F. O’Callaghan, A History of Medieval Spain (1975), provides the best one-volume coverage; for more detail see Jocelyn N. Hillgarth, The Spanish Kingdoms, 2 vols. (1976, 1978). Barbara W. Tuchman, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century (1978), is a popular account of the crises of that era. Norman F. Cantor, In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World It Made (2001), supplies a thorough introduction.
The Latin West’s expansion is well treated by Robert Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization, and Cultural Change (1993); J. R. S. Phillips, The Medieval Expansion of Europe, 2nd ed.
(1998) ; and P E. Russell, Portugal, Spain and the African Atlantic, 1343-1492 (1998).
Francis C. Oakley, The Western Church in the Later Middle Ages (1985), is a reliable summary of modern scholarship. Kenneth R. Stow, Alienated Minority: The Jews of Medieval Latin Europe (1992), provides a fine survey up through the fourteenth century. For pioneering essays on the Latin West’s external ties, see Khalil I. Semaan, ed., Islam and the Medieval West: Aspects of In-terculturalRelations (1980).
World History
