Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages

by Dan Jones

Rome was a highly networked superstate, whose disparate peoples were linked by super-engineered roads, efficiently policed seaways, and trade routes that extended to the ends of the earth.

If Barbara Tuchman (A Distant Mirror) and Johan Huizinga (The Waning of the MIddle Ages) left you restless for more insight into the middle ages this comprehensive survey may help satisfy your curiosity. This could be the lecture course you never had a chance to take as an undergraduate. Dan Jones manages this narrative history with great skill and good humor, occasionally reflecting on how parts of the story rhyme with our own turbulent times.