I'm going to take the risk here of recommending a book I'm only a third of the way through: A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, by Barbara Tuchman.
It's a fascinating tour through a fascinating time and the sort of book that might make you decide Tuchman is your second-favorite history writer. I say second favorite because she introduces readers to Giovanni Villani of Florence, "the great historian of his time." And while I have only read of him what Tuchman recounts, that's enough to make him someone to marvel at. Villani died at age 68 as the Black Death swept through Florence, Tuchman records, "in the midst of an unfinished sentence":
… e dure questo pistolenza fino a …
Tuchman translates this as "… in the midst of this pestilence there came to an end …"
A historian whose final act was to write the unfinished sentence recording his own death. There was a person who had found his proper calling.
Anyway, A Distant Mirror. Great book if you're interested in that sort of thing. Possibly even a great book to make you interested in that sort of thing.
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