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Brow: Sorbonne Professor? Check. Editor of The Cambridge History of the Middle Ages? Check. Yup, this is highbrow fare.
Summary: Clearly I didn't read the review very well, because I was expecting a regular history book, one that introduced a few characters and led us through their everyday lives during the Middle Ages. Instead we get a 400-page essay mostly about the French experience. There are no characters and the work is largely impressionistic rather than drawing on concrete examples.
What I liked about it: As I've said before, I'm a nerd and a lot of my non-fiction reading choices are made like this: I read a review and think, 'Wow. I don't know much about that subject. And if the Economist/New Yorker/Slate etc. finds this book good enough to give it a positive review, maybe I should give it a try.' I'm also a dilettante: I want to know a few facts about a subject, but it's comparatively rare that I want to dig down deep into a subject. So books that offer a survey of a topic while giving me a few good tidbits to bring up at dinner parties are great. And this one delivers: for example, did you know that people with blood type B are more resistant to the bubonic plague? And for some reason a lot of Hungarians are blood type B? And therefore Hungary escaped the plague relatively unscathed? Also, it is strongly suspected that many medieval female 'authors' such as Heloise of Abelard and Heloise, and Marguerite de Navarre, probably did not write their books, because female literacy rates were appalling, and probably no women were actually taught to write.
What I didn't like about it: This is just a personal preference, but I find it a lot easier to get into a subject, even dilettantishly, if I have a plot line and characters to follow, and this book lacks both.
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