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The Tale of Offa and the Arabic Coin
I’m still in the eighth century. Struggling valiantly (and slowly) toward the ninth. Here’s my favorite story of the week. Once upon a time, a king named Offa ruled in the English kingdom of Mercia....
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Hi ho, hi ho…
I’m back to work now. So, in no particular order, here’s what’s occupying the brain of THIS working writer on the first day of December… 1. I’m waiting on the contract from Princeton University Press...
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Scenes from a Monday morning
Sundays are work days for us, so Mondays are our days off. It’s sprinkling a little this morning, but not too hard; the windows are open and the birds are singing. The neighbor’s cows are mooing (in...
View ArticleWhy does “prolific” not sound like a compliment?
I’m not sure why, but whenever someone calls me a prolific writer, it makes me cringe. Why is that? It has some sort of negative implication which I can’t quite tease out. Anyway, I’m not feeling very...
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Yep, it’s Charlemagne.
You guys are good. The painting is by Jules Laure (1806-1861). It shows Charlemagne receiving manuscripts from his tutor, the monk Alcuin, around 781. Charlemagne is a good choice for the cover of the...
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Why does “prolific” not sound like a compliment?
I’m not sure why, but whenever someone calls me a prolific writer, it makes me cringe. Why is that? It has some sort of negative implication which I can’t quite tease out. Anyway, I’m not feeling very...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Yep, it’s Charlemagne.
You guys are good. The painting is by Jules Laure (1806-1861). It shows Charlemagne receiving manuscripts from his tutor, the monk Alcuin, around 781. Charlemagne is a good choice for the cover of the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
An excerpt from the History of the Medieval World
I have now been sick since the Monday before Thanksgiving. In fact, I may never get well. So instead of racking my cough-syrup-addled brain for a topic to post on, I’m posting a highly relevant excerpt...
View ArticleThe medieval world runs smack into the 2012 Olympics
Hey, I wrote about these guys! From CNN: They were 51 young men who met a grisly death far from home, their heads chopped off and their bodies thrown into a mass grave. Their resting place was unknown...
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The afterword
Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree, Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes – Some have got broken – and carrying them up to the attic. The holly and the mistletoe...
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Today’s Historical Facts
On my Facebook page, I occasionally post a “Historical Fact of the Day”–generally the one interesting thing I’ve discovered in eight or ten hours of hard historical slog. It occurs to me that some of...
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Strong teeth, those.
Polishing up a couple of early chapters in Volume 3 of the History of the World, I ran across one of my favorite minor historical characters. You can’t get much more colorfully off-the-wall than Fulk...
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A few of those details for you.
I spent the better part of a week rounding up contemporary chronicles that record this chunk of Welsh history, about the Welsh prince Llewellyn ap Gruffyd and his attempt to free Wales from the...
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When Did the Middle Ages End and the Renaissance Begin? The Last in a...
Following on my first and second posts in this series, I’ll now wrap up by telling you why my upcoming History of the Renaissance World begins in the twelfth century and ends with the conquest of...
View ArticleBlogging at Psychology Today
Dear readers of this infrequently updated blog, I’ll be blogging semi-regularly at Psychology Today about personalities of the past. Check it out here: Welcome to the Past If you’ve read my History of...
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