is a book about power. By that I do not mean simply political power, or even human power. We will come across many mighty men and women (although because this is the Middle Ages, there are inevitably more of the former than the latter). But I am also interested in mapping great forces beyond human control. Climate change, mass migration, pandemic disease, technological change, and global networks: These sound like very modern, or even postmodern, concerns. But they shaped the medieval world too. And because we are all, in a sense, children of the Middle Ages, it is important that we recognize
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