Ian's World of History

In this page you will find a list of useful books and articles with some active links to online resources. These range from intensely academic reads which will be useful in school projects and university essays to leisurely and accessible material for your enjoyment. I will add to this list whenever I discover a useful new set of books and articles.
Useful general online resources and archives:

• http://www.jstor.org/
• http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook.html
  
• http://www.freewebs.com/thehistoryvault (a more academically centred collection of articles by a variety of authors)
• www.templarhistory.com (a wide range of material and original sources on the history of the Knights Templar)
• http://www.ewtn.com/library/COUNCILS/LATERAN4.HTM (4th Lateran Council 1215)
• http://www.seanmultimedia.com/Pie_Pachomius_Rule_1.html (Monastic Rule of Saint Pachomius)
• http://www.osb.org/lectio/cassian/conf/book3/conf18.html (John Cassian: Conferences)
  
• http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/350701.htm (John Cassian: Institutes)
  

 

Europe

• Angold. M, Byzantium, Phoenix Press, 2001 (Useful and light read on the transition of Europe from antiquity into the medieval period)
  
• Barber. M, The Two Cities: Medieval Europe 1050-1320, Routledge, Second Edition, 2004 ( A very useful overview of many of the key issues in medieval Europe, is very useful as an introduction to many topics covered in many university medieval history courses)
• Chester Jordan. W, Europe in the High Middle Ages, Penguin, 2001 (Another accessible yet detailed and wide ranging study)
• Chester Jordan. W, The Great Famine: Nothern Europe in the Fourteenth Century, Princeton, 1996
• Ennen. E, The Medieval Town, Amsterdam, 1979
  
• James. E, The Franks, Blackwell, 1988 (Good introduction to the establishment of the Frankish kingdom in Gaul from the decline of the Roman Empire through the Merovingian dynasty to the crowning of Charlemagne)
  
• Jotischky. A and Hull. C, The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Medieval World, Penguin, 2005 (A brief yet colourful and accessible book covering a wide range of events over the medieval period)
• Le Goff. J, The Medieval World: The History of European Society, Parkgate Books, 1997 (Good for the social climate and habitat of the medieval period)
  
• Smith. J.M.H, Europe After Rome: A New Cultural History 500-1000, Oxford, 2005 (An up to date and useful study about social and religious conditions in the early medieval period)

Britain

• Barlow. F. The Feudal Kingdom of England 1042-1216, Longman, 1961, ( A specific study of the kingdom of England in a period of transition from the Norman conquest to the signing of the Magna Carta and the events in between)
• Barrow. G.W.S, Feudal Britain, 1956
• Bartlett. R, England Under the Norman and Angevin Kings 1075-1225, Oxford, 2000
  
• Chibnal. M, Anglo-Norman England 1066-1166, Oxford, 1986
• Frame. R, The Political Development of the British Isles 1100-1400, 1990
• Harvey. B, Living and Dying in England 1100-1540 The Monastic Experience, Oxford, 1993
• Knowles. D.B, The Religious Houses of Medieval England, London, 1940
• Salzman. L.F, Edward I, London, 1968
  
• Walker. D, The Normans in Britain, 1995

Papacy and Monasticism

• Braunfels. W, Monasteries of Western Europe: The Architecture of the Orders (Thames and Hudson, 1972)
• Cantor. N.F, The Crisis of Western Monasticism 1050-1130, American Historical Review Vol. 66 No.1, 1960, Pages 47-67 (Available on JSTOR)
• Chapman. G, St. Benedict and the 6^th Century, Greenwood Press, 1971
• Cheney. C, Pope Innocent III and England, Stuttgart, 1976
• Constable. G, Cluny from the 10^th to the 11^th Centuries (Ashgate, 2000)
• Coppack. G, Fountains Abbey: The Cistercians in Northern England (Charleston, 2005)
• Elder. E.R, The New Monastery: Texts and Studies on the Earliest Cistercians (Cistercian Publications, 1998)
• Fergusson. P, The Architecture of Solitude: Cistercian Abbeys in 12^th Century England (Princeton University Press, 1984)
• Harvey. B, Living and Dying in England 1100-1540 The Monastic Experience, Oxford, 1993
• Knowles. D.B, The Religious Houses of Medieval England, London, 1940
• Knowles. D.B, Christian Monasticism, London, 1969
• Lawrence. C.H, The Friars: The Impact of the Early Mendicant Movement on Western Society, London, 1994
• Oakley. F.P, The Western Church in the Later Middle Ages, Cornell University, 1979
• Robinson. I.S, The Papacy 1073-1198 Continuity and Innovation, Cambridge, 1990
• Rousseau. P, Pachomius: The Making of a Community in 4^th Century Egypt, California, 1985
• Sayers. J, Innocent III: Leader of Europe 1198-1216, London, 1993
• Workman. H.B, The Evolution of the Monastic Ideal, London, 1927

• Atiya. A.S, Crusade, Commerce and Culture, Indiana University, 1962
• Barber. M, The Trial of the Templars, 1978
• Barber. M, The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple, 1994
• Barber. M and Bate. K, The Templars, 2002
• Barber. M, The Cathars, 2000
• Bridge. A, The Crusades, Granada, 1980
• Dickson. G, Religious Enthusiasm in the Medieval West, Chapter on the Children's Crusade of 1212, Ashgate, 2000
• France. J, Victory in the East, Cambridge University, 1994
• Gabrieli. F, Arab Historians of the Crusades, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969
• Krey. A.C, The First Crusade: The Accounts of Eyewitnesses and Participants, Princeton, 1921
• Hamilton. B, The Crusades and Their Sources, Ashgate, 1998
• Housley. N, Contesting the Crusades (Blackwell, 2006)
• Mayer. H.E, The Crusades, Oxford, 1988
• Murray. A.V, From Clermont to Jerusalem, Brepols, 1998
• Napier. G, The Rise and Fall of the Knights Templar, Spellmount, 2003 (good overview of the formation and abolition of the Knights Templar as well as their role in the crusades and the medieval world in general)
• Powell. J.M, The Anatomy of a Crusade 1213-1221, Philadelphia, 1986
• Prawer. J, The World of the Crusaders, Weidenfield and Nicholson, 1972
• Queller. D, The Fourth Crusade (Leicester University, 1978)
• Richards. D.S, The Chronicle of Ibn al-Athir from the Crusading Period from al-Kamil fi’l-Ta’rikh., Ashgate, 2006 (2 volumes)
• Riley-Smith. J, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading, University of Pennsylvania, 1991 (Good in-depth study of the crusading ideology and the events leading up to and during the first crusade)
• Riley-Smith. J, The Crusades: A Short History, London, 1987
• Riley-Smith. L and Riley-Smith. J, The Crusades: Idea and Reality 1095-1274, London, 1981
• Runciman. S, The Eastern Schism (Oxford, 1955)
• Schein. S, The Image of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem in the Thirteenth Century,
  
• Sumption. J, The Albigensian Crusade (London, 1978)
• Tyreman. C, The Invention of the Crusades (Macmillan, 1998)
• http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/urban2-5vers.html  (A few primary accounts of Pope Urban II's speach at Clermont in 1095)
• http://history.hanover.edu/texts/1stCrusade1.htm (A letter from Anselme of Ribemont about his motivation for the first crusade)
• http://www.templarhistory.com (a site devoted to the study of the history of the Knights Templar including a set of articles and a published magazine. The forum is also very useful for answers to specific questions by knowledgeable experts)

• Arthur. M, Forgotten Voices of the Great War, Ted Smart, 2002 (contains many original accounts from soldiers at the front and some great photos from the Imperial War Museum)
  
• Bishop. A, Bostridge. M, Letters from a Lost Generation, Abacus, 1999 (excellent for individual experiences of war)
  
• Dunn. J.C, The War the Infantry Knew 1914-1919, Abacus, 1999 (first published in 1938)
• Erickson. E.J, Strength Against Weakness: Ottoman Military Effectiveness at Gallipoli 1915, Journal of Military History Vol. 65 No. 4, (JSTOR)
  
• Halpern. P.G, A Naval History of World War One, United States Naval Institute, 1994
• MacGregor. D, The use, misuse, and non-use of History: The Royal Navy and the Operational Lessons of the First World War, Journal of Military History Vol. 56 No. 4, (available on JSTOR)
  
• Sheffield. G, Forgotten Victory: The First World War Myths and Realities, Headline, 2001
• Toll. J, The Origins of the First World War, Longman, 1984 (second edition 1992)
• Warner.P, The Battle of Loos, Wordsworth, Great Briton, 2000
• http://www.firstworldwar.com (narrative accounts and photographs, even some audio files presented in an accessible and non academic but still very accurate manner)
• http://www.1914-1918.net (some great articles and photographs for the general interest reader)