I read this in college, with a fantastic professor (RIP) who also assigned Huizinga's "Homo Ludens." I loved it ...if only the rest of academic history was so free-thinking and human-centric, I might have stayed.

"Night Battles" is amazing too. And the fact that some of the scholarship in both books is contested adds to the interest - he really rattled some cages and wasn't afraid to take an idea and run with it.

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jhbadger a day ago | parent [-]

Interesting that the professor assigned "Homo Ludens" rather than "The Waning of the Middle Ages" (or "Autumn of the Middle Ages" in some translations) which is a more famous work by Huizinga.

	▲	shermantanktop a day ago \| parent [-]
		He did both! Along with The Great Chain of Being by Lovejoy. We also studied the Divine Comedy (all three ugh), the librettos for the Magic Flute and the Barber of Seville, Frankenstein, and lots more. I took multiple courses with him, so this is across several years.