WThe Annals of University College. Proving William of Durham the True Founder: and Answering all their Arguments who Ascribe it to King Alfred is a 1728 book on the history of University College, Oxford by the college archivist and antiquary William Smith. The book, controversial upon its release, has since been hailed as a remarkable, and exceptionally scholarly, early work of college history.
WThe Autumn of the Middle Ages, The Waning of the Middle Ages, or Autumntide of the Middle Ages, is the best-known work by the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga.
WL'enfant et la vie familiale sous l'ancien régime is a 1960 book on the history of childhood by French historian Philippe Ariès known in English by its 1962 translation, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life. It is considered the most famous book on the subject, and it is known for its argument that the concept of "childhood" is a modern development.
WThe Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature is a non-fiction book by C. S. Lewis. It was his last book and deals with medieval cosmology and the Ptolemaic universe. It portrays the medieval conception of a "model" of the world, which Lewis described as "the medieval synthesis itself, the whole organization of their theology, science and history into a single, complex, harmonious mental model of the universe."
WA Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century is a narrative history book by the American historian Barbara Tuchman, first published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1978. It won a 1980 U.S. National Book Award in History.
WThe Foundations of Modern Political Thought is a two-volume work of intellectual history by Quentin Skinner, published in 1978. The work traces the conceptual origins of modern politics by investigating the history of political thought in the West at the turn of the medieval and early modern periods, from the 13th to the 16th centuries. It represents the contextualist approach to the history of ideas which Skinner and his colleagues in the Cambridge School had pioneered in the 1960s.
WFrederick the Second is a biography of Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, by the German-Jewish historian Ernst Kantorowicz. Originally published in German as Kaiser Friedrich der Zweite in 1927, it was "one of the most discussed history books in Weimar Germany", and has remained highly influential in the reception of Frederick II. The book depicts Frederick as a heroic personality, a messianic ruler who was "beseeltes Gesetz", the law given soul, but also a charismatic and calculating autocrat—"probably the most intolerant emperor that ever the West begot".
WHandbuch der Geschichte der böhmischen Länder, is a four-volume book, edited by the German historian Carl Bosl from 1967 to 1974 and covering the history of Bohemia, starting from its ancient history to the middle of the 20th century.
WThe History of the Norman Conquest of England: Its Causes and Its Results is a six-volume study of the Conquest by Edward A. Freeman, published between 1867 and 1879. Recognised by critics as a major work of scholarship on its first publication, it has since proved unpopular with readers, many of whom were put off by its enormous length and copious detail. Academics have often criticized it for its heavily Whig treatment of the subject, and its glorification of Anglo-Saxon political and social institutions at the expense of their feudal successors, but its influence has nevertheless been profound, many Anglo-Norman historians of modern times having come around to some of Freeman's main conclusions.
WThe Making of Saint Louis: Kingship, Sanctity, and Crusade in the Later Middle Ages is a 2010 book by historian M. Cecilia Gaposchkin. Gaposchkin draws on hagiographical, visual, and narrative material, as well as little-used liturgical sources and sermons, to discuss the process by which Louis was canonized and made a saint in the eyes of a large public. The book was praised by other scholars.
WMedieval Children is a book on the history of childhood written by English historian Nicholas Orme in 2001. It covers aspects of English children throughout the Middle Ages. The book addresses what is considered Philippe Ariès's central thesis in Centuries of Childhood, that there was no medieval understanding of childhood as a phase, an idea that critics have said Orme refutes successfully.
WMillennium: The End of the World and the Forging of Christendom is a historical study of the Middle Ages by the popular historian Tom Holland. It was first published in 2008 by the Little, Brown Book Group.
WMohammed and Charlemagne is an academic book by the Belgian historian Henri Pirenne (1862–1935) which was first published posthumously in 1937. It set out an alternative argument about the end of Roman influence in Europe and the emergence of the Dark Ages which emphasised the importance of the Arab expansion in the Middle East and Levant which has become known as the Pirenne Thesis. Although successive historians have tended to reject the argument as an explanation of the period, it remains influential as a means of thinking about geography and periodisation in the Early Middle Ages and the debate it sparked is widely taught in university medieval history courses.
WThe Pagan Middle Ages is an academic anthology edited by the Belgian historian Ludo J.R. Milis. Containing eight papers by various Dutch and Belgian historians and archaeologists, it is devoted to the study of how various pre-Christian religious beliefs and practices survived and were absorbed into the new, Christian society in Europe during the Middle Ages. It was first published by the Institut Historique Belge de Rome in 1991 under the Dutch title of De Heidense Middeleeuwen and subsequently translated into English by Tanis Guest and published by The Boydell Press in 1998.
WSaint Louis is a 1996 biography of Louis IX of France by historian Jacques Le Goff. The book received positive reviews for its historical detail, and was awarded the 1996 Grand prix Gobert by the French Academy. It was also a best-seller.
WSatanism and Witchcraft is a book by Jules Michelet on the history of witchcraft. Originally published in Paris as La Sorcière in 1862, the first English translation appeared in London a year later.
WThe Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century is a handbook about Late Medieval England by British historian Ian Mortimer. It was first published on 2 October 2008 by The Bodley Head, and a later edition with more pages was released on 29 February 2012. The volume debunks and explains various myths about the period.
WThe WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous is a 2020 book by Harvard professor Joseph Henrich that aims to explain history and psychological variation with approaches from cultural evolution and evolutionary psychology. In the book, Henrich explores how institutions and psychology jointly influence each other over time. More specifically, he argues that a series of Catholic Church edicts on marriage that began in the 4th century undermined the foundations of kin-based society and created the more analytical, individualistic thinking prevalent in western societies. The book received positive reviews.
WA World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance: Portrait of an Age is an informal history of the European Middle Ages by American historian William Manchester. Published in 1992, the book is divided into three sections: "The Medieval Mind", "The Shattering", and "One Man Alone". In the book, Manchester scathingly posits, as the title suggests, that the Middle Ages were ten centuries of technological stagnation, short-sightedness, bloodshed, feudalism, and an oppressive Church wedged between the golden ages of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance.