Book excerpt: The essential introduction to the Middle Ages by the author of The Time Traveller's Guide series—“the most remarkable medieval historian of our time” (The Times, UK). We tend to think of the Middle Ages as a dark, backward and unchanging time characterized by violence, ignorance and superstition. By contrast we believe progress arose from science and technological innovation, and that inventions of recent centuries created the modern world. But as Ian Mortimer shows in this fascinating book, we couldn’t be more wrong. In this revelatory history, Mortimer shows how people's horizons—their knowledge, experience and understanding of the world—were utterly transformed between 1000 and 1600, marking the transition from a warrior-led society to that of Shakespeare. Medieval Horizons sheds light on the enormous cultural changes that took place—from literacy to living standards, inequality and even the developing sense of self. Mortimer demonstrates why this was a revolutionary age of fundamental importance in the development of the Western world.