Charlemagne: Father of a Continent

‘Cameron’s translation makes the book lively an readable, and he has captured Barbero’s wit, keen eye for detail, and sharp analysis of sources.’? ‘Accessible to a wide audience and educated non-specialists, and it would be an excellent addition to required texts in a survey class.’?’Carey Fleiner – University of Delaware Canadian Journal Of History

‘Judiciously avoids scholarly arcana and long-winded digressions into source-criticism and historiographical debates. Barbero nonetheless shows commendable familiarity with much of the traditional and recent scholarship on Charlemagne’s reign, and effectively communicates to a wider audience the essentials of these debates, both within the text and in the discursive bibliography, with elegance, wit, and attitude.’?’H-France Review Of Books

‘The author of this rich . . . accessible study provides an intimate portrait of the man’right down to his shirt and underpants’and a sensitive analysis of his government and times. “‘Publishers Weekly

‘Nuanced and … fair to his subject.’?’The Economist

‘[Professor Barbero] … has a lightness of touch indispensable in approaching a subject which has constipated generations of continental scholars. He is particularly good in following through the repercussions of war down the social scale to the peasants who made up at least 90 per cent of the population. . . . Barbero is also a historical novelist, and knows how to hold the attention with arresting details.’?’The Spectator“Barbero’s lively and entertaining study provides a superb overview of the latest scholarship on the Carolingian age and constructs a compelling argument for Charlemagne’s pivotal role as the father of Europe. We gain a sense of the look and feel of peasant villages, the dynamic interplay of monastic economies and long-distance trade, and the manipulation of justice by local notables. This is histoire totale at its best.”‘Sharon Farmer, author of Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris

“This up-to-date account focuses on the man and his times while clearly and judiciously dealing with key historio-graphical issues. Barbero explores and explodes the myths that have grown up around the emperor.”‘Barbara H. Rosenwein, Loyola University