Editor’s Picks This Month at a Glance
This month’s selection of medieval history books shows just how wide, strange and compelling the medieval world remains. Far from being limited to kings, battles and castles, these new and recent titles open doors onto plague, pilgrimage, women’s family lives, imperial politics, and even medieval laughter. Together, they remind us that the Middle Ages were not a single story, but a vast landscape of fear, faith, ambition, humour and survival.
Several of the books chosen for June focus on the human experience of medieval life. The Black Death returns to one of the most devastating events in human history, but does so by looking beyond simple statistics and familiar European narratives. It asks what catastrophe meant for ordinary people and for societies forced to endure loss on an unimaginable scale. The Family Lives of Medieval Women takes a different but equally important approach, moving into the household, the family and the daily structures that shaped women’s lives across social ranks. In doing so, it helps correct the narrow view that medieval women’s history belongs only to queens, saints and exceptional figures.
Faith and movement also feature strongly in this month’s list. The Medieval Pilgrim explores pilgrimage as one of the defining experiences of medieval Christianity: a journey of devotion, penance, healing and hope. It brings us closer to the roads, shrines and sacred destinations that shaped how medieval people understood salvation and suffering.
For readers drawn to power and politics, The Angevin World, 1154–1204 offers a more scholarly but rewarding look at the Plantagenet lands of England, Normandy, Anjou, Aquitaine and beyond. It asks how far this world can be understood as an empire, and how fragile such power could be. Finally, Medieval Humour: Expressions, Receptions and Functions adds a refreshing change of tone, reminding us that medieval people also joked, mocked, parodied and laughed.
Taken together, these books offer a rich month of reading. They are varied in subject and style, but each helps us see the medieval past as something alive, complex and deeply human.
Thomas Asbridge revisits the Black Death as a global catastrophe, tracing plague’s political and cultural shock across the medieval world.
Catherine Hanley brings medieval women into domestic focus, exploring marriage, kinship, work and power within the family’s rich everyday world.
Michael Brown follows medieval pilgrims on roads to shrines, relics and salvation, revealing faith as movement, risk and shared hope.
This collection reconsiders the Angevin world, exploring power, culture and connection across the restless lands of the Plantagenet empire.
Medieval Humour explores laughter, wit and satire across medieval culture, showing how jokes shaped community, criticism, social meaning and power.
Why We Chose These Medieval Reads
Plague History
Thomas Asbridge turns to one of the defining catastrophes of the medieval world: the Black Death. Rather than treating the plague as a purely European disaster, this book widens the lens to follow its course across a connected medieval world, from London and Florence to Cairo, the Near East, North Africa and Asia. What makes it especially compelling is its balance of scale and intimacy. The pandemic becomes both a global event and a human tragedy, seen through the lives of those who endured fear, loss, persecution, resilience and social upheaval.
Catherine Hanley’s The Family Lives of Medieval Women shifts attention away from the exceptional queens, saints and rebels who usually dominate medieval women’s history. Instead, it asks what family meant for women across social ranks: wives, widows, daughters, mothers, workers and household managers. The book’s strength lies in its human scale. It promises a medieval world seen through domestic ties, legal constraints, labour, affection, inheritance and daily responsibility. For a general readership, this is a valuable corrective to the idea that medieval women can be reduced to a single experience. It gives women’s lives texture, variety and historical depth, beautifully.
Sacred Journeys
Michael Brown’s The Medieval Pilgrim opens a path into one of the most emotional journeys of the Middle Ages. Pilgrimage was never only travel. It could be an act of penance, gratitude, healing, devotion or hope, carrying people across dangerous roads towards shrines, relics and sacred landscapes. This book is especially appealing because it connects belief with movement: the sore feet, crowded roads, holy destinations and expectations of miracle that shaped medieval religious life. For HistoryMedieval readers, it offers an accessible way into faith as lived experience, showing how ordinary people sought salvation through the physical act of journeying homeward.
The Angevin World, 1154–1204 is a more specialist but highly rewarding choice for readers drawn to power, territory and political imagination. Edited by Stephen D. Church, Laura Cleaver and Matthew Strickland, the volume reassesses the lands ruled by the early Plantagenets, from England and Ireland to Normandy, Anjou and Aquitaine. Its central question is compelling: was this really an “empire”, or a fragile collection of lordships held together by dynasty, war, culture and administration? For a June list, it adds scholarly weight and gives Plantagenet readers a fresh way to think beyond kings, battles and familiar narratives this month too.
Medieval Humour: Expressions, Receptions and Functions, edited by Kleio Pethainou, is a refreshing reminder that the Middle Ages were not only solemn, violent or devotional. Medieval people laughed, mocked, teased, parodied and played with language, images and performance. This interdisciplinary collection explores humour across art, literature, drama, society and culture, while also asking a difficult historical question: how can we recognise what people in the past found funny? Its appeal lies in that tension between familiarity and distance. The book opens a lively window onto medieval wit, showing laughter as social commentary, entertainment and sometimes sharp criticism, for modern readers.
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Luciano Anastasi
Luciano is the founder of the MedievalHistory platform and the LinkedIn History Enthusiasts Group, where he is dedicated to curating and sharing high-quality medieval history content. His goal is to engage scholars, teachers, students, and enthusiasts by fostering insightful discussions and promoting scholarly resources on topics from medieval warfare and religion to societal transformations and daily life in the Middle Ages.
Luciano is also an active book reviewer, focusing on academic publications related to medieval history. He recently collaborated with Yale University Press to review forthcoming medieval history titles, aiming to deepen educators' and researchers' understanding of the period. Alongside his history endeavors, he has over 40 years of experience in IT leadership roles across various industries, including the public sector, banking, insurance, airlines and consulting, and has contributed to United Nations projects.
With a Master of Arts in Business Process Management, Luciano combines his expertise in IT strategy and governance with his passion for medieval history. He leverages technology to bridge the academic community and the wider public, making historical scholarship more accessible through engaging online content.
