Ian Mortimer begins his book with a series of complaints about the mistaken ways many think about the Middle Ages. For example, he complains that some people think of the period as one static, unchanging period of time whereas things changed radically during that period. He also complains that when people today call something medieval they are disparaging it and implying that it was very backward whereas a there was really a lot of sophistication developed during that period. Finally, he says that "many of our contemporary concepts, values, and priorities originated in the Middle Ages."

The period covered is from the year 1000 to the year 1600.. The book is divided into seven sections exploring how the Middle Ages dealt with topics war, inequality, comfort, speed , literacy, and individualism. What the author does well in this book is to take these specific topics and explain how they developed from the beginning of the period up until 1600 and what consequences those developments have on our own contemporary lives. For example, in the year 1000 there were no longer any mirrors and people had no real idea what they looked like. When the mirror was rediscovered in the 13th century and made cheap enough for common people to afford, people started to develop a sense of individualism and an urge to appear more fashionable.

The book is unfortunately focused almost exclusively on England which misses a lot of what was happening elsewhere while at least getting the book shorter and more focused. More disappointing is the author's tendency to over-generalize leaving the impression that every single person was affected by something when the reality was that only a limited number of people were affected at any given time.

The book is an easy and entertaining read and helps remind the reader of how dynamic the period was. ( )

This is a lengthy essay, developed from a speech, about the change of mankind during the Middle Ages. We are wrong, Mortimer argues, if we think of the Medieval period as static, and part of the problem is that we are too much fixated on the advances of modern technology. The Middle Ages knew important technological change as well (and Seb Falk did proofread this book) but above all they brought a change in belief systems and social structures that laid the foundations of the modern age.

Mortimer is an eloquent writer. I think the reader should keep in the back of his mind that this is an essay in which Mortimer develops a position and argues it, not a work of research in which every statement is grounded in evidence. For example, I am unconvinced by the author’s claim that an 11th century peasant did not have much individuality. For sure, they lived very communal working lives. They did not leave autobiographies, as almost none of them could write. Lords of the manor controlled much of their lives, sure. But look at the modern office, in which employers have banned the trinkets and pictures of loved ones that adorned desks, and attempted to create sterile deserts of inhuman interchangeability. For sure this is an attempt to deny the expression of individuality, but does that mean that individuality does not exist? Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Mortimer stretches the Middle Ages to 1600. I understand that it makes sense in a British context, because the coming to power of James I/IV in 1603 was a watershed moment. But I regret it, in part because 1453 marks the fall of the last remains of the Roman Empire, and in part because those years 1450-1600 were marked by so much instability, violence and intolerance. The romantic in me wants to see the Middle Ages as a relatively happy time before the bloody chaos of the early modern period. (I find that when people use “medieval” in a pejorative sense, these years are often what they are thinking of.) But above all, I think that lengthening the Middle Ages to 1600 weakens rather than strengthens the case that they were a period of change.

This book is a very useful correction on the facile assumptions about our ancestors that still prevail. I suspect that some of arguments that Mortimer uses might well fall apart if someone has the opportunity to analyse the details. But there is enough substance to this book that a few flaws will not decide the case. ( )