"From the fall of Rome to the beginning of the Renaissance, this comprehensive work presents the full pageant of medieval times across the entire Old World - with articles on the New World, Africa, and the Far East as well. Twenty major essays anchor the text while more than 600 entries written by a coterie of the world's best medieval historians and writers provide specific information on everything from the Abbadid Dynasty to the Seal of Zug. Interspersed throughout are maps, diagrams, and more than 250 color and black-and-white illustrations detailing all the elements of everyday life: dress, locales, edifices, ceremonies, customs, military tactics, travel, home life, commerce, religion, and royalty. Generous helpings of sidebar material complement the text with chronologies of important lives and events, glossaries of medieval terminology and jargon - excerpts from the great documents of the times and from writings of the great personages, genealogical charts - even recipes for classic medieval dishes and instruction on medieval skills and practices. And at every opportunity, material is compared with modern life through "then and now" images, an ingenious tool that sheds new light on the origins of modern social and political phenomena."--BOOK JACKET.